Correcting a Historical Misconception (Episode 01)

A common misconception is that Lahore’s prestigious residential area, Model Town, was designed by Sir Ganga Ram. Historical records, however, do not support this claim.
Historical and research records establish that Sir Ganga Ram was primarily a civil engineer, not a professional architect or town planner. He studied civil engineering at the Thomason College of Civil Engineering, Roorkee, and later joined the Punjab Public Works Department (PWD), where he eventually rose to the position of Executive Engineer.
The actual history of Model Town Lahore is somewhat different.
Model Town was one of the earliest fully organised cooperative housing society models in British India. It introduced the local Indian bourgeoisie and affluent middle class — including doctors, lawyers, engineers and businessmen — to new ideas of residential planning and offered a practical model of organised, healthy and prosperous urban living.
The concept behind Model Town Lahore was developed by Dewan Khem Chand, who drew inspiration from the principles of the Garden City Movement, an important and progressive model of urban planning that emerged in England during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Dewan Khem Chand adapted these ideas to the local conditions of the Indian subcontinent and laid the conceptual foundation for a balanced, organised and prosperous residential settlement in Lahore. It was on this basis that he came to be regarded as one of the principal founders of Model Town.
Dewan Khem Chand was born inside Lahore’s Bhati Gate. Later, sometime between approximately 1910 and 1915, he travelled to England to study law as a Barrister-at-Law, where he became familiar with the ideas of Ebenezer Howard, founder of the Garden City Movement.
Howard argued that rapidly growing cities needed new settlements that could provide an alternative to overcrowding, industrial pollution and densely populated neighbourhoods. These new communities were to combine residential facilities with greenery, gardens and open spaces.
To explain this concept, Howard presented diagrams in his book Garden Cities of To-morrow (1898), including the well-known “Three Magnets” and Garden City Diagram.
Through these diagrams, he demonstrated how a new city could be organised in a balanced way:
A central park at the core
Government buildings and community facilities around it
Residential neighbourhoods beyond them
A surrounding green belt and agricultural land
Industry and railway infrastructure towards the outer edge
His ideas were later put into practice in England through developments such as Letchworth Garden City in 1903 and Welwyn Garden City in 1920. Similar planning ideas later influenced the development of Model Town in Lahore during British India.
The plan illustrated by Ebenezer Howard showed a broadly circular settlement. The inner area was reserved for a central park and open green space, surrounded by public buildings and community halls. Beyond these came residential neighbourhoods, followed by agricultural land and a green belt intended to support food production and other resources.
The central philosophy was to combine the advantages of urban and rural life within one planned community.
Influenced by the Garden City Movement, Dewan Khem Chand imagined a similar type of settlement for Lahore. Following the publication of his pamphlet containing proposals for suburban residential development, the Model Town Society was formally established in 1921.
In Khem Chand’s concept, each house would stand on its own separate plot with a private garden or green area. Wide streets, open grounds and parks would provide sufficient light and ventilation — a major contrast to the narrow and irregular streets of old Lahore.
He also proposed that essential services such as water supply, drainage, sanitation and electricity should be provided through proper planning. The settlement was to be developed on a cooperative rather than purely profit driven basis, enabling middle class families to obtain quality housing through affordable instalments.
Model Town was therefore intended to be more than simply a residential scheme. It also represented a social experiment for the middle class, which was one of the reasons it was organised as a Co-operative Society.
Before the establishment of Model Town, Lahore’s residential landscape was very different.
In the old city, narrow and winding streets were lined with small houses built closely together, their walls appearing almost like a continuous enclosure. Inside many homes, an open courtyard provided light and ventilation and served as the centre of domestic life.
In surrounding villages, houses were commonly built from mud and brick, while burnt brick and lime were more widely used in urban areas. Wealthier residents lived in large havelis and spacious residences with broad verandas and open courtyards, while ordinary people generally lived in smaller homes within congested neighbourhoods.
Basic services such as water supply, drainage and sanitation often depended more on individual household arrangements than on systematic urban planning. Everyday life therefore demanded considerable effort and adjustment.
Historical references also indicate that the initial layout plan of Model Town Lahore was prepared by N. L. Verma, an engineer and planning specialist associated with Allahabad, now Prayagraj in India.
He was the planner commissioned by the Model Town Society in 1922 to prepare the master plan.
When a design competition was held and 32 plans were submitted, the committee did not approve any single proposal in its entirety. Instead, four of the best plans were selected.
It was then decided that the strongest features of those four designs should be combined into one master plan. This responsibility was given to N. L. Verma of Allahabad, British India, giving him a central role in shaping the eventual layout of Model Town Lahore.
For this reason, he is historically regarded as one of the earliest key architects and planners associated with Model Town.
As circumstances changed over the following years, however, Model Town’s design and planning also continued to evolve. Those later changes will be discussed in the next chapters.
To be continued in Episode 2.