The Great Eastern Hotel in Old Court House Street, just off Dalhousie Square, was one of the finest in Calcutta. According to Calmanac:

The Great Eastern Hotel was established in 1841 by David Wilson (nicknamed Dainty Davy) and was known as Wilson's Hotel and then Auckland Hotel before it was renamed the Great Eastern Hotel in 1865. It was the second big hotel in Calcutta, coming after the Spence's Hotel, established in the 1830s. This hotel became a popular institution very soon after its coming into being. It led in many fields like quality food and drink, modernisation, entertainment, and till its sad decline decades back, kept on leaving marks in the city's history. It is said to be one of the first premises in Calcutta to be illuminated with electric light in 1883. It was one of the few places in Calcutta using "Romane's Patent Punkah Machines" which claimed: "one punkah coolie can easily do the work of three or four".

In 1857, while the Mutiny raged elsewhere in India, "[the hotel] became another rallying point for the British and from there they sent out their patrols of Volunteers [...] to scout the city till midnight, while in the poorer Eurasian quarters people loosened their fear by firing fusillades of blank cartridges for hours on end. Nothing happened. On Monday morning everyone went sheepishly home and started to relieve bruised feelings with a campaign for retribution upon those who had threatened but not harmed anyone." [a]

John Beames, a contemporary witness, was less flattering: "[we] went, on landing, to D. Wilson's Hotel (now called the Great Eastern), a large, stuffy, vulgar, noisy place permeated with a mixed odour of cooking and stale tobacco. We could not stand it for long and were advised to take rooms in a boarding house." [b] By 1912, the Great Eastern Hotel had become the "first place in Calcutta to be air-conditioned" and was flattered by comparison with its rival, the Grand, which was said to be "over-run with rats, but comfortable". [c]

This photograph of the Great Eastern Hotel is one of a series of Calcutta street scenes taken by the Bourne and Shepherd studio in 1915. It is one of several of their photographs reproduced on the CalcuttaWeb photo gallery and also on the Harappa website.

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