Not many buildings in Delhi are as old and charismatic as the Delhi Gymkhana Club. Situated within the leafy avenues of Lutyens’ Delhi, the club has stood for nearly a century as a beacon of a very different era of the capital.
It was founded in 1913 as the Imperial Delhi Gymkhana Club and was moved to its present Safdarjung Road location in the late 1920s, when New Delhi itself was still taking shape under British planning. Over the decades, the club evolved into Delhi’s most memorable architectural examples from the pre-independence era.
Designed in the early 1930s by British architect Robert Tor Russell, the building is designed in a manner that defines understated sophistication, much like that of central Delhi’s colonial-era architecture. Russell is also the same architect who designed Connaught Place, believed in structures that responded to Delhi’s climate while maintaining symmetry, openness, and grace.
Here are four architectural features that make the Delhi Gymkhana Club one of the most iconic buildings in Lutyens’ Delhi.Photos: DelhiGymKhana/ Gallery
