Western Railway Headquarters Building

Cross the road from Churchgate station, where suburban trains disgorge commuters in waves every few minutes, and the eye is pulled towards a long, domed pile of dressed stone standing guard over the top of Maharshi Karve Road.

• This is the headquarters of the Western Railway, raised at the close of the nineteenth century for the Bombay, Baroda and Central India Railway, the company whose tracks first linked the island city to Gujarat and the north.
• It is one of the last major works of Frederick William Stevens, the engineer-architect whose Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, a short ride east, remains the most photographed building in Mumbai.
• Completed around 1899, the headquarters is generally described as Indo-Saracenic: a late-Victorian hybrid in which Indian domes, chhatris and cusped arches were grafted onto a Gothic Revival frame.
• Look for the deep arcaded verandahs that keep the Arabian Sea glare off the offices behind, the banded stonework that gives the facade its striped, biscuit-and-grey rhythm, the carved capitals, and the crowning dome that anchors the corner.
• Later decades added storeys and services, and the building has never been a museum piece - it is a busy operational office, complete with window units, cabling and notice boards, which is part of its appeal for anyone who likes their heritage still in use.
• There is no ticket and no interior tour.
• Visitors see the building from the public footpath, and the clearest vantage points are the pavement outside Churchgate station and the far side of the road, where the full width of the facade reads at once.
• Photograph from across the street, leave tripods behind, and do not point a camera at security staff, gates or entry points; this is a working government office and courtesy costs nothing.
• Twenty to thirty minutes is enough, and the stop works best inside a longer heritage walk - the Oval Maidan with its Art Deco frontages, the Rajabai Clock Tower and the Bombay High Court all lie within a fifteen-minute stroll, in the precinct UNESCO inscribed in 2018 as the Victorian Gothic and Art Deco Ensembles of Mumbai.
• Churchgate and the Fort lanes behind it are among the kindest corners of Mumbai for a vegetarian traveller.
• Long-running Gujarati and Rajasthani thali houses serve unlimited platters of dal, kadhi, farsan and rotli; Udupi-style cafes turn out idli, medu vada, dosa and filter coffee from early morning; and carts near the station and along Marine Drive sell vada pav, pav bhaji, bhel puri and roasted corn.
• Mumbai is equally a great seafood city, though, and kitchens cooking fish and mutton sit on the very same streets, so look for a board that plainly says pure veg and confirm at the counter before ordering - particularly for anything fried, where oil may be shared.
• Jain travellers should ask for no onion and no garlic, and say so before the food goes on the fire rather than after.