All India War Memorial Arch

Description

The idea of a War Memorial in New Delhi, sited in the space created by the important conjunction of roads at the eastern end of King’s Way, was first proposed in 1917. Lutyens’s Arch design was approved in 1920, begun in 1921 and was completed in 1931. The Memorial commemorates 70,000 Indians who died in the First World War and on it are carved the names of 13,516 Indian soldiers who died on the North West Frontier and the Middle East and whose graves were unmarked. Although a comparatively simple arch compared with some of Lutyens’s later memorials in Europe, it is given vitality by the succession of set backs as it rises and by the fact that the arch itself, springing from less than half way up the building, carries a massive, blocky domed attic above the principal cornice – unlike the Arc de Triomphe to which it is comparable in size. A plume of smoke was intended to rise from the top of the Memorial. (Amery et al, 1981, cat no.428)

Bibliography

Amery, C., Richardson, M. and Stamp, G., (1981) Lutyens, the Work of the English Architect Sir Edwin Lutyens (1869-1944): Hayward Gallery London, 18 November 1981 – 31 January 1982. London: Arts Council of Great Britain.

Also Cited In

Richardson, M. (1994) Sketches by Edwin Lutyens: Drawings from the Collection of Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA Drawings Monographs No. 1). London: Wiley.

Butler, A., 1950. The architecture of Sir Edwin Lutyens: the Lutyens memorial series. Vol III: Town and Public Buildings: Memorials: The Metropolitan Cathedral, Liverpool, Country Life: London and Scibners: New York.

Gliddon, G. and Skelton, T.J. (2008) Lutyens and the Great War. London: Frances Lincoln.

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