Talk:Cotton Green

This article cites no sources or dates, and only speculates

The Gazetteer of Bombay City and Island (1909) mentions (p. 458-460) that native stock brokers (not cotton traders, but stock brokers) had no formal association 1840-68. Only after the rise to wealth of Premchand Roychand, the Bombay Native Stockbrokers' Association was formed. Between 1840 and 1855, the Gazetter says, "the brokers' meeting-place was somewhere on the Cotton Green (the modern Elphinstone Circle).... Afterwards it was held between the old Fort Walls..." (p. 460).

The article's theory behind the name "Cotton Green" sounds pretty home-spun, with no homework to back it up. There's no particular reason why "Cotton Green" should be a corruption of "Cotton Grain". Cotton Green could have been named after a person called Cotton (e.g. Sir George Cotton, Bishop Cotton of Calcutta).

Art Deco is an early to mid twentieth-century style. The article offers no reason or explanation as to why this cotton exchange building should be built, at Cotton Green, so long after the 1860s, when the cotton trade peaked and spawned the construction of so MANY grand edifices all over Bombay! I've yet to check more thoroughly, but the Gazetteer does not mention a Cotton Exchange at all in the sections on trade. An art deco building would, of course, come chronologically after the Gazetteer, but if that building was indeed the cotton exchange, where was it located before? Why is the intersection of Princess and Kalbadevi Streets called Cotton Exchange?

So much to find out :) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 59.182.181.86 (talk) 21:59, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

I agree with the above poster. I have added a reference to the older Cotton Green in Colaba, which in old maps is in an open area, hence a village green, as well as a link to a photo of cotton bales being loaded on boats in 1910. Here is the text of the citation:

Cotton Green Road. (From Colaba Causeway to Merewether Road.)

"The present Cotton Green is situated at Colaba, and was first set apart for the purpose about the year 1844." (Bombay City Gazetteer, III, 252). The original Cotton Green of Bombay (the side of which is now partly occupied by Elphinstone Circle q.v.) was called the Bombay Green. This use of the word Green — of which there is a survival in Green Street — can never have been very apt in dusty Bombay. Golfers with rare veracity use the word Brown, and the Cotton Brown on the analogy of "putting brown," would be a better description. To this fact, attention was drawn in 1839 when were published the anonymous (by Major David Price) " Memoirs of the Early Life and Service of a Field Officer of the Indian Army." Referring to his residence in Bombay in 1789, the author says : "Having landed our detachment of the ninth battalion and paraded them under the old tamarind tree on Bombay Green (so called I suppose like lucus a non lucendo, because it seldom or never exhibits that colour so refreshing to the eye), we finally conducted them to their barracks on the Esplanade. I then sought my staid and excellent friend, Wilham Morris, and with him, agreed to renew, as long as circumstances would admit, that confraternal plan of living together which had hitherto for so many years contributed so largely to our mutual comfort. For this purpose we rented a well built house, about half way between the Church and Bazaar Gate at the termination of the back lane opening upon the ramparts which from the occupation of our opposite neighbours we call Shoe-Maker Lane." Ash (talk) 22:57, 1 November 2014 (UTC)

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