Kurla - History

History

In 1548, The village of Kurla along with six others was given by the Governor of Portuguese India to Antonio Pessoa as a reward for his military services. In 1668, Kurla was part of the islands leased out to the British East India Company. At this time, Kurla was connected to Sion by Sion Causeway.

The name Kurla originated from "Kurli", the local name for crab, (as these were found in plenty in marshes in the vicinity) before it became a sub-urban locality.

Coorla, as it was spelt during the British Raj, was a major station on the Great Indian Peninsula Railway ten miles north-east of Bombay, and with six other villages, Mohili, Kolikalyan, Marol, Shahar, Asalphe, and Parjapur, was the property of Mr. Ardeshir Hormasji Wadia, a Parsi merchant of Bombay, who paid for them a yearly quit-rent of £358 (Rs. 3587). The villages were originally (in 1808) given to Mr. Hormasji Bamanji Wadia in exchange for a piece of land near the Apollo pier gate in Bombay. The difference between the value of the villages and of the ground in Bombay, £864 (Rs. 8640), was at first paid yearly to Government. It was redeemed and the estate conveyed in fee simple in 1840–41. Kurla had two cotton mills, one of them, the Dharamsi Punjabhai being the largest cotton spinning and weaving mill in the Presidency, with 92,094 spindles and 1280 looms. The other was the Kurla Spinning and Weaving Mill . The village had a population of 9715, about half of them mill-hands, the rest – chiefly fishermen, husbandmen and salt-makers. The Holy Cross Church at Kurla, built during the Portuguese rule and rebuilt in 1848, is one of the oldest churches in Mumbai.

The Mithibai Hormasji Wadia Dispensary was built by Mr. Bamanji Hormasji Wadia in 1855, and endowed by him with £1200 (Rs. 12,000). It was in charge of an assistant surgeon, and, in 1880–81, had an attendance of 7367 out-patients. The salt pans covered an area of about 66 acres (270,000 m2) and yielded a yearly revenue of £3418 (Rs. 34,180). There was also a considerable manufacture of shell lime. Kurla was connected with Sion on Bombay island by the Sion causeway, which bore the following inscription: ' This causeway was begun in May 1798 and was finished in January 1805, during the administration of the Honourable Jonathan Duncan Esquire. It cost £5037 (Rs. 50,374). It was doubled in width, and other improvements added, in 1826, under the government of the Honourable Mountstuart Elphinstone, at a further cost of £4000 (Rs. 40,000). The causeway was originally constructed under the superintendence of Captain William Brooks of the Engineers, and the additions and improvements made in 1826 under that of Captain William Tate of the same corps.'

The beginning of the twentieth century saw Kurla develop as an important centre of the mill industry. In 1910, there were reported to be several mills in Kurla, engaged in the manufacturing of cotton cloth and woollen cloth in steam factories. Kurla, however, was an old textile industrial core, an outlier to the main cotton mill zone. A relatively cheaper land value and nearness to water and power mains enabled rapid industrial expansion of the suburbs and the Kurla-Ghatkopar-Vikhroli-Bhandup belt soon developed into the largest industrial zone in the suburbs of Mumbai. The Kurla Railway Car-shed was constructed in 1925 when electrification of the Great Indian Peninsula Railway (GIPR) Harbour line was undertaken. The first electric train in Asia that ran between CST and Coorla on February 3, 1925 was maintained at this car shed. The Salsette-Trombay Railway, also known as the Central Salsette Tramway, opened in 1928. The 13 kilometre line, a project of the Bombay Improvement Trust run by the GIPR, ran from Trombay to Andheri via Kurla and lasted only a few years.

During the late fifties and sixties, the old Kurla neighbourhood developed into an automobile industrial zone, with the erection of the Premier Automobiles main assembly plant in this area. The Dairy Development Department of the State Government, in order to cope-up with the increasing demand for milk, established a dairy at Nehru nagar, Kurla (East) in 1975.