Click to play videoMumbai: Watson’s Hotel is India's oldest surviving cast iron building in Mumbai. Over the years, it has gone through some transformations and today is known as the Esplanade Mansion.
However, there is more history to Watson Hotel than this. The building is more popularly known as the 'Gateway of Indian Cinema'.
Hundred and ten years ago on July 7, 1896, cinema took its first step into India through this very gateway.
Watson’s Hotel was the first place to screen cinematographer Lumiere Brothers' grand invention - the moving picture.
The six films that were unveiled here to the delight of the viewers included, Entry of Cinematographe, Arrival of train, The Sea Bath, A Demolition, Leaving the Factory and Ladies and Soldiers on Wheels.
Unlike the films today, these films had no story line or sequence to them, they were mere recordings of events.
However, they still managed to captivate the audience like nothing else could in those times as it was for the first time that people were able to watch a picture, which 'moved'.
It is even said that when the film Arrival of train was screened, people ran for their lives thinking that the train would come and hit them.
Sadly though, the only Indians who were exposed to those these films were the domestic help working in Watson’s Hotel, because those were the years of the British rule in India and since the hotel was a prestigious place, Indians were not allowed inside.
However, things have changed. The grand atrium of those days, which still holds high architectural and heritage credentials, is wasting away.
A resident of the building, Osmand Papi says, "This place has become a scrapyard now whereas it used to be a beautiful lobby during the time of the British."
The sad part is that though the steppingstone for the heights that Indian cinema has reached today was laid in Watson’s Hotel, very few acknowledge this contribution.
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