How Two Friends Built a City and Fell Out
Edwin Lutyens and Herbert Baker were friends long before they were commissioned to build New Delhi. They were both young apprentices to a London architect and stayed in close touch after. When Lutyens was chosen as lead architect for the imperial city, he agreed to share his commission with Baker, who had more experience in big public projects. Their friendship, however, did not survive the building of the city.
Around a decade after they started working on New Delhi it was clear they had fallen out irreversibly. In a letter dated July 4, 1922, Lutyens wrote to Baker: “I used to count you as one of my best friends, and a man I held in great affection, but I cannot help feeling that a great deal of my work in Delhi has been spoilt because I trusted to your loyal cooperation; and that this trust has been misplaced.” In his reply, Baker agreed with Lutyens on one point only: that there was no way their friendship could recover and this, he wrote, “is one of the saddest facts of my life.”
The friends parted ways over the layout of New Delhi’s landmark buildings: Government House and the Secretariat Buildings, designed by Lutyens and Baker, respectively. Government House, now Rashtrapati Bhavan, was originally the Viceroy’s residence and the Secretariat Buildings, now North and South Block, were administrative offices. The complex has long been the political heart of post-Independence India.
So what went wrong? Lutyens wanted Government House to stand on top of Raisina Hill so that it would dominate an otherwise flat landscape. But Baker’s Secretariats, originally meant to stand at the hill’s bottom, got in the way. Inspired by the achievements of other imperial authorities – the Greeks, Romans and Mughals – both saw the building of New Delhi as heralding a new architectural era. Raisina Hill, a rare elevated hotspot, is where the flagship buildings of imperial authorities would stand – and both wanted to leave their mark there.
Lutyens agreed to make space for the Secretariats on the hill only to bitterly regret it. To make space for them, Government House had to be pushed further back from the edge of the hill. Only later did he realize that the plan he agreed to would make it impossible for anything but the dome of Government House to be visible from below. He blamed Baker, who designed the road linking the Secretariats, for miscalculating the gradient.
He complained about it to his wife Emily early on: “I am having difficulty with Baker. You remember the perspective showing the secretariats with Government House beyond. Well, he has designed his levels so that you will never see Government House at all (!) from the Great Place [Vijay Chowk.] You will see the top of the dome!” Lutyens was right: if you walk from India Gate down Rajpath you’ll notice that Rashtrapati Bhavan gradually sinks behind the hill. Lutyens tried to persuade Baker to change his plans but to no avail.
In his letter to Baker, Lutyens said “a colossal artistic blunder has been made, and future generations will, I am convinced, recognize this and condemn its perpetrator.” To make sure the blame wouldn’t fall on him, Lutyens recorded his disapproval many times over. Baker’s defense centered on technicalities, on the fact the Lutyens himself had also approved of the plan. Lutyens called this his “Bakerloo.”
In retrospect, it is evident theirs was a clash of egos as much as of architectural visions. While Lutyens was chiefly concerned with the artistic legacy he was leaving behind, Baker was more pragmatic about it. Lutyens was “totally committed to the project, living, eating, sleeping and fighting for his dream,” writes Malvika Singh in “New Delhi: the Making of Capital.” At the time, Baker advised Lutyens to take the project less personally and to instead focus on the bigger service they were providing to the British administration in India. He had worked on public projects elsewhere in the empire, most notably in South Africa, and his main concern was that the new city embodied “the spirit of British sovereignty.”
Their respective priorities are mirrored in the buildings they produced. While neither was a fan of Indian architecture, both wanted a blend of Indian and Western elements for New Delhi. But they went about it in very different ways. Baker’s designs were essentially European with an Indian accent. He used classical European forms, like colonnades and Renaissance-like domes, and Indian decorations, like arched porches and lattice screens.
Lutyens, on the other hand, wanted to avoid an East-meets-West pastiche and was more committed to a substantial fusion of styles. The result was forms that stood out for their originality. His crowning achievement is the great dome of Government House, partly inspired by the Buddhist Stupa in Sanchi and the Pantheon in Rome. Robert Byron, one of the first visitors to New Delhi after the city’s completion, in an essay praised the dome’s design for its “individuality, its difference from every dome since the Pantheon.”
Baker recognized Lutyens’ superior talent. In a eulogy written for Lutyens after his death in 1944, he argued that “in his talent for artistic rather than constructive design he may be considered even greater” than Wren, who at the time was widely seen as the greatest British architect of all time. Baker also gave a lucid analysis of his stormy friendship with Lutyens: “Looking back after these many years…. I can see more clearly that our personal differences had their roots in our natures and outlook on art. He concentrated his extraordinary powers and immense industry on the abstract and intellectual values to the sacrifice sometimes, I considered, of human and national sentiment and its expression in our buildings.”
Today, despite their differences, Lutyens’s and Baker’s buildings rise atop Raisina Hill as part of a cream- and red-sandstone whole that stands as the greatest architectural legacy left by the British in India.
Around a decade after they started working on New Delhi it was clear they had fallen out irreversibly. In a letter dated July 4, 1922, Lutyens wrote to Baker: “I used to count you as one of my best friends, and a man I held in great affection, but I cannot help feeling that a great deal of my work in Delhi has been spoilt because I trusted to your loyal cooperation; and that this trust has been misplaced.” In his reply, Baker agreed with Lutyens on one point only: that there was no way their friendship could recover and this, he wrote, “is one of the saddest facts of my life.”
The friends parted ways over the layout of New Delhi’s landmark buildings: Government House and the Secretariat Buildings, designed by Lutyens and Baker, respectively. Government House, now Rashtrapati Bhavan, was originally the Viceroy’s residence and the Secretariat Buildings, now North and South Block, were administrative offices. The complex has long been the political heart of post-Independence India.
So what went wrong? Lutyens wanted Government House to stand on top of Raisina Hill so that it would dominate an otherwise flat landscape. But Baker’s Secretariats, originally meant to stand at the hill’s bottom, got in the way. Inspired by the achievements of other imperial authorities – the Greeks, Romans and Mughals – both saw the building of New Delhi as heralding a new architectural era. Raisina Hill, a rare elevated hotspot, is where the flagship buildings of imperial authorities would stand – and both wanted to leave their mark there.
Lutyens agreed to make space for the Secretariats on the hill only to bitterly regret it. To make space for them, Government House had to be pushed further back from the edge of the hill. Only later did he realize that the plan he agreed to would make it impossible for anything but the dome of Government House to be visible from below. He blamed Baker, who designed the road linking the Secretariats, for miscalculating the gradient.
He complained about it to his wife Emily early on: “I am having difficulty with Baker. You remember the perspective showing the secretariats with Government House beyond. Well, he has designed his levels so that you will never see Government House at all (!) from the Great Place [Vijay Chowk.] You will see the top of the dome!” Lutyens was right: if you walk from India Gate down Rajpath you’ll notice that Rashtrapati Bhavan gradually sinks behind the hill. Lutyens tried to persuade Baker to change his plans but to no avail.
In his letter to Baker, Lutyens said “a colossal artistic blunder has been made, and future generations will, I am convinced, recognize this and condemn its perpetrator.” To make sure the blame wouldn’t fall on him, Lutyens recorded his disapproval many times over. Baker’s defense centered on technicalities, on the fact the Lutyens himself had also approved of the plan. Lutyens called this his “Bakerloo.”
In retrospect, it is evident theirs was a clash of egos as much as of architectural visions. While Lutyens was chiefly concerned with the artistic legacy he was leaving behind, Baker was more pragmatic about it. Lutyens was “totally committed to the project, living, eating, sleeping and fighting for his dream,” writes Malvika Singh in “New Delhi: the Making of Capital.” At the time, Baker advised Lutyens to take the project less personally and to instead focus on the bigger service they were providing to the British administration in India. He had worked on public projects elsewhere in the empire, most notably in South Africa, and his main concern was that the new city embodied “the spirit of British sovereignty.”
Their respective priorities are mirrored in the buildings they produced. While neither was a fan of Indian architecture, both wanted a blend of Indian and Western elements for New Delhi. But they went about it in very different ways. Baker’s designs were essentially European with an Indian accent. He used classical European forms, like colonnades and Renaissance-like domes, and Indian decorations, like arched porches and lattice screens.
Lutyens, on the other hand, wanted to avoid an East-meets-West pastiche and was more committed to a substantial fusion of styles. The result was forms that stood out for their originality. His crowning achievement is the great dome of Government House, partly inspired by the Buddhist Stupa in Sanchi and the Pantheon in Rome. Robert Byron, one of the first visitors to New Delhi after the city’s completion, in an essay praised the dome’s design for its “individuality, its difference from every dome since the Pantheon.”
Baker recognized Lutyens’ superior talent. In a eulogy written for Lutyens after his death in 1944, he argued that “in his talent for artistic rather than constructive design he may be considered even greater” than Wren, who at the time was widely seen as the greatest British architect of all time. Baker also gave a lucid analysis of his stormy friendship with Lutyens: “Looking back after these many years…. I can see more clearly that our personal differences had their roots in our natures and outlook on art. He concentrated his extraordinary powers and immense industry on the abstract and intellectual values to the sacrifice sometimes, I considered, of human and national sentiment and its expression in our buildings.”
Today, despite their differences, Lutyens’s and Baker’s buildings rise atop Raisina Hill as part of a cream- and red-sandstone whole that stands as the greatest architectural legacy left by the British in India.
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