JOIN USApartment No. 49 E, Sujan Singh Park – the residence of late Khushwant Singh, a writer, historian and columnist, who recently died of cardiac arrest, is as popular and iconic as Singh. After all, Sujan Singh Park was built by Khushwant Singh’s father Sir Sobha Singh, who, interestingly, named it after his father –Sujan Singh.
Easily identified from its red brick exteriors, high ceilings and thick walled flats,
Sujan Singh Park is City’s first apartment complex, which only had bungalows till then, in 1945. It is one of the rare little havens left in this city which was built during
colonial period.
It was designed by Walter Sykes George, the British
architect who designed other famous buildings in the city. Built in 1945, it is modelled
on 20th century British housing complexes, with
its large, high-arched entrances, art deco facades and large windows.
These were the first apartments in New Delhi, which only had bungalows till then. In fact, it was with Sujan Singh Park that the European style of identical housing was introduced in Delhi. Walter Skyes George, created gardens squares — each block of the four-storey building encloses
a square park.
Notably, Sobha Singh was also a part of the project. Interestingly, he constructed at least 28 iconic structures of the City, including South Block, India Gate, and the Jaipur Column outside Rashtrapati Bhavan, Vijay Chowk, the National Museum and
the Modern School on Barakhamba Road.
Like Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker, the principal architects whose plans he helped materialise, Singh was never honoured by having a road or building named after him – and isn’t popularly remembered today. Yet he acquired so much land in the new city Delhi that he was famously called owner of half of New Delhi.