India, April 6 -- In 1911, with the transfer of the imperial capital from Calcutta to Delhi, the northern Ridge near Civil Lines was drawn into the military geography of the new administration. Rural tracts were acquired and reorganised under a planned regime. By the 1930s, Banarasi Dass Chowdhury and his family had secured land from the colonial government in what would become Timarpur, now identified as the BD Estate near Civil Lines. Construction extended from 1930 to 1966, with Anand Prakash Chowdhury building a series of houses on these plots. Between the 1930s and 1947, these structures answered to the administrative needs of the area. Seven houses were constructed to a near-identical plan. The conventional layout of the Indian house ...