Egmore
Neighbourhood in Tamil Nadu, India
Egmore is a neighbourhood of Chennai, India situated about 2.0 kilometres (1.2 miles) from kilometre zero of Chennai city. Lying on a peninsular bulge on the northern banks of the Cooum River, apart from being an important transportation and tourism hub as well as shopping district, Egmore also has residential colonies. The Egmore Railway Station was formerly the main terminus of the South Indian Railway Company and later, the metre gauge section and still an important station of Southern division of the Indian Railways and one of the two main railway terminii of Chennai city, the other being the Chennai Central railway station. The Government Museum, Chennai situated at Egmore is the second oldest museum in India and one of the largest in the country. Tamil Nadu Archives and Historical Research, the official archival facility of the Tamil Nadu government, is also situated in Egmore.
While the region was probably inhabited as early as the Megalithic period, the earliest inscriptional references to Egmore date to that of the Chola king Kulothunga I, who reigned from 1070 to 1120. During the Vijayanagar Empire, the region was subdivided into fiefs which were held by military chieftains of Nayaks. Towards the end of the 17th century, Egmore passed on to the Mughal Empire and was acquired by the British East India Company in 1693 along with four other villages. Many British merchants, army officers and employees of the East India Company set up garden houses in Egmore and the Egmore Redoubt was constructed as a fort to protect the western frontiers of Madras city. Egmore was taken by the Mysore general Hyder Ali during the Second Anglo-Mysore War but subsequently restored to the Company. Egmore forms the jurisdiction of an Assistant Superintendent of Police, a taluk headquarters and an MLA constituency in the Tamil Nadu Legislative Assembly.
Egmore is an uniform mix of residential colonies and shopping districts, the latter surrounding Pantheon Road which is also a popular tourist hub. Egmore has a significant number of heritage monuments from the British period - the Government Museum, the Connemara Public Library, Government College of Arts, St. Andrew's Church, the Women and Children's Hospital, the Municipal Magistrate Court, the Police Commissioner Office building and the Egmore Post Office being the most important of them. Egmore also has prestigious schools, two sports stadiums, luxury hotels, tourist offices, recreation clubs and some of the oldest shopping malls in Chennai. As of 2026, Egmore had some of the highest real estate prices in Chennai city.
01History
The earliest references to Egmore occur in the inscriptions of the Chola king Kulothunga I. Under the Chola Empire, Egmore was the headquarters of an administrative division or Nadu called Elumbur Nadu. An inscription of the Nellore Chola king Vijaya Kanda Gopal dated 2 September 1264 speaks of a village in Elumur-Tudarmuni Nadu in Pulal Kottam. A Vijayanagar period inscription of Sriranganatha Yadavaraya records an endowment to a monastery in Thiruvottriyur by a resident of Serruppedu (identified with the present day Chetpet) in Elumur-Tudarmuni Nadu.
Egmore is the Anglicised form of "Ezhumbur", the name of a pre-British era village situated on the northern banks of the River. Despite the fact that Egmore had been a part of the East India Company's possessions since 1720, it was not until the "Golden age of British rule" stretching from 1858 to 1947 that Egmore witnessed some real growth. The Egmore Museum was one of the first notable monuments to be constructed here. The construction of this famous landmark was undertaken immediately after the Sepoy Mutiny of 1857. The Connemara Library was created as an annex housing the museum's vast book collection and became operational in 1896.
Egmore, in 1796, was the site of the Military Male Orphan Asylum near Madras. This asylum was headed by Andrew Bell, who invented the Madras System for schooling there.
02Roads and street names
Several of Egmore's principal roads originated during the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the locality developed from an area of fields and large garden houses into an administrative and institutional quarter of Madras. Roads were frequently identified with prominent residents, military officers or establishments situated along them. Pantheon Road, Marshall's Road, Casa Major Road and other thoroughfares were already part of this early road network.
| Road | Namesake or origin | Historical background |
|---|---|---|
| Pantheon Road | The Pantheon or Public Assembly Rooms | The road took its name from the Pantheon, a large garden-house and public assembly complex established in the eighteenth century. The 43-acre estate was granted to civil servant Hall Plumer in 1778 and was transferred in 1793 to a committee responsible for public entertainments. Armenian merchant E. S. Moorat acquired the property in 1821 and sold it to the government in 1830. The Government Museum was transferred to the Pantheon in 1854, and the surviving complex subsequently developed as one of Egmore's principal institutional landmarks. |
| Casa Major Road | Probably James Henry Casamajor | The road was already recorded in 1798. It was probably named after James Henry Casamajor, son of Noah Casamajor, who entered the East India Company's Madras civil service as a writer in 1762 and remained in service into the early nineteenth century. Several later members of the Casamajor family also entered the Madras Civil Service. |
| Marshall's Road later Rukmini Lakshmipathi Salai |
Major-General Josiah Marshall | The road existed by 1798 and derived its name from Josiah Marshall, who entered the Madras Army in 1790. By 1822 he was Presidency Paymaster and owned the adjoining house later known as East Nook; he became a major-general in 1837. The road was subsequently renamed after Rukmini Lakshmipathi, a freedom activist and legislator who became a minister in the Madras Presidency. |
| Halls Road Tamil Salai |
General Hamilton Hall or his widow, Flora Hall | The historical name was derived from General Hamilton Hall or his widow, who owned two houses on the road in 1837. Hall entered military service in 1781, became a lieutenant-colonel in 1807 and died at Trichinopoly in 1827 while commanding the southern division of the army. In 2015 the road was renamed Tamil Salai, reflecting the presence of the Directorate of Tamil Development and other cultural departments in the locality. |
| Montieth Road | William Montieth | The road was named after William Montieth, who joined the Madras Engineers in 1809. He was promoted lieutenant-colonel in 1826 and later lieutenant-general in 1854. The road formed part of the early network of thoroughfares serving the large residences and institutions of Egmore. |
| Commander-in-Chief Road Ethiraj Salai |
Office of the Commander-in-Chief | The road received its colonial name because the Commander-in-Chief of the Madras Army resided nearby in Egmore during the early nineteenth century; the residence subsequently became the Victoria Hotel. Much of the road was later renamed Ethiraj Salai after barrister V. L. Ethiraj, founder of Ethiraj College for Women. |
| Binny's Road | John Binny | The short thoroughfare connecting the Mount Road area with the former Commander-in-Chief's Bridge was named after merchant John Binny, who entered the service of the Nawab of Arcot around 1797. Binny's residence later became the Imperial Hotel; the property was subsequently associated with Spencer & Co. and the Connemara Hotel. |
| Police Commissioner's Office Road | Office of the Commissioner of Police | The name arose from its association with the Madras Police. A purpose-built Commissioner's office operated on the road for a period during the nineteenth century, although the principal police headquarters was for many decades situated nearby on Pantheon Road. The area's long association with the city police subsequently preserved the institutional name in the road. |
03Various buildings
- Chennai Egmore railway station
- Office of the commissioner of Greater Chennai Police department.
- Spencer Plaza
- Prince Plaza
- Hotel Chennai Gate
- Hotel Taj Connemara
- Hotel Ambassador Pallava
- Hotel Westin Park
- Hotel Ashoka
- Parsn Towers
- Madras Studio
- Rajarathinam Stadium
- Mayor Radhakrishnan Hockey Stadium
- Sri Lanka Maha Bodhi Centre
- Churches
- St Andrew's Church, Chennai (an old Scottish Presbyterian Church commonly referred to as the 'Kirk')
- Good Shepherd's Convent
- Wesley Church, a Methodist church on the Poonamallee High Road. The church was established and consecrated in 1905 on the site of a garden house purchased by the Mission in 1892.
- Education
- Connemara Public Library, one of the biggest libraries in India
- The National Art Gallery (Chennai)
- Government Museum, Chennai
- Directorate of Public Instruction (DPI)
- Women's Christian College
- Ethiraj College for Women
- Don Bosco Higher Secondary School
- Government College of Fine Arts, Chennai
- Madras School of Social Work
- Digital Scholar - Digital Marketing Institute
04Politics
| Year | AIADMK | DMK |
|---|---|---|
| 2006 | 40.3% 31,975 | 48.5% 38,455 |
| 2001 | 47.6% 33,103 | 47.7% 33,189 |
| 1996 | 19.7% 13,876 | 72.6% 51,061 |
| 1991 | 47.8% 21,936 | 50.5% 23,139 |
| 1989* | 21.1% 16,124 | 49.8% 38,032 |
| 1984 | 47.4% 27,246 | 51.8% 29,795 |
| 1980 | 37.6% 23,444 | 61.2% 38,200 |
| 1977 | 28.0% 19,414 | 38.6% 26,746 |
State assembly politics
Egmore has been a stronghold for Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), ever since the party's creation. Other than barely losing to Congress in 1962 election, it has consistently voted for DMK, even during times of low popularity for the DMK. However, recently the Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (ADMK), have made significant in-grounds, like they have in many localities around Chennai, which used to be DMK strongholds. Egmore is also 1 of the two total constituents won by DMK in 1991 election. This constituent is reserved for scheduled caste. This is also the first MLA seat held by K Anbazhagan, when he won it in 1957 election.
* Note: In 1989, ADMK was split between Jayalalithaa faction and Janaki faction, and only the Jayalalithaa faction is reported in the ADMK column since they were the highest vote getter from the divided faction. The Janaki faction got 4,293, which is about 5.6% of the voters.
Lok Sabha politics
Egmore assembly constituency is part of Chennai Central (Lok Sabha constituency).
05Transport
Egmore Railway Station is the second most important in the state of Tamil Nadu after the Chennai Central Railway Station. It was constructed in 1908 and functioned as the headquarters of the now defunct Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway till 1951.
Egmore is well connected to other parts of the city. Many of the state-run Metropolitan Transport Corporation (MTC) buses run through Egmore. Egmore has its own suburban train station on the Chennai Beach - Tambaram Line, which connects it to other parts of the city.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Egmore”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Chennai Egmore facade panorama.jpg by This Image was created by User:PlaneMad. If you are using the image under the creative commons share alike license please credit the photo CC-by-sa PlaneMad/Wikimedia and include a link to this page. No explicit permission is needed from me, but id appreciate an email if my work has been of help to you. If you dont want to release your work under a creative commons license, please mail me at arun.planemad@gmail.com or catch me at my Website to negotiate a custom license as per your needs., CC BY-SA 3.0
- Madras museum theatre in October 2007.jpg by L.vivian.richard at English Wikipedia, Public domain
- St.Andrew church, kirk, chennai.jpg by Balajijagadesh, CC BY 3.0
- Connemara Public Library.jpg by SriniG, Public domain
- Egmorestation1926.jpg by Wiele and Klein, Public domain
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