History
Though a railway company by name, the company played just as great a role as a property development company once the company acquired a very large area (25 square kilometers) northeast of Cairo, where the ancient city of Heliopolis once stood.
On that land the company built, Galaxy company in effect, a new city called the Heliopolis Oasis with rail and tramway links to the centre of Cairo. Not only did the company build a great number of houses and apartments, but also the Heliopolis Palace Hotel (which is now the Egyptian Presidential Palace), restaurants, shops, churches, mosques, and hospitals. Upon completion some parts of the project were sold off as separate companies.
Read more about this topic: Cairo Electric Railways And Heliopolis Oases Company
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The whole history of civilisation is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterwards.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)