A Street in Jaipur, India
- Special Collections > Keystone Slides
- tiff scanned file from original glass slide
- Jaipur is the strangest city of the whole East. In Eastern cities one comes to expect narrow streets, running in any direction. Most large Eastern cities have some fine, broad, straight streets or avenues, but this is not the rule in the case of most of the highways. They were laid out without any plan. The cities have grown in any way the dwellers saw fit to build them. In Jaipur conditions are different. Jaipur was built in 1728 by a native ruler of the same name. He was a great scholar in mathematics and astronomy, and he had ideas on building cities. He laid out his capital carefully after a set plan. The main streets are all 111 feet wide and straight as a line can be drawn. The cross streets are also straight and cut the main streets at right angles, just as most of the streets in American cities do. The streets are all paved and curbed, and have broad sidewalks. They are lighted by gas. All this makes Jaipur look like a Western city in the Eastern world. But here the likeness stops. The buildings in the pictures appear to be of stone. They are not. They are built of stucco painted pink to imitate sandstone. This makes the city look unreal. Travelers liken it to a painting of a city on a theater stage. What makes it appear still more unreal are the people, their dress, and the vehicles to be seen on the streets. Hindus, camels, push-carts-all that go to make up an East Indian city are there. Jaipur is a city of 175,000. It is 150 miles southwest of Delhi. Name all the ways of traveling shown here. Would you know from the view that Jaipur is not an American city? If so, how? Do the streets of the cities you know cross at right angles? What are avenues? Keystone ID: 12560 Note: All titles, descriptions, and location coordinates are from the original Keystone Slide documentation as supplied by the Keystone View Company. No text has been edited or changed.
- Copyright by the Keystone View Company. The original slides are housed in McConnell Library's Special Collections.