Raj Bhavan (Chennai)

Raj Bhavan, literally the "Governor's Palace," is the official residence of the Governor of Tamil Nadu. It is located in Chennai, the capital city of Tamil Nadu.HistoryThe earliest official residence of the Governors of Madras were in Fort St. George, the first one built in the 1640s on what is now the Parade Square. This was pulled down in 1693 and a new one built eastwards where, in later years, it became the core of the Secretariat. When the Governor’s garden house, was destroyed by the French in 1746, a new garden house was acquired for the Governor after the French withdrawal in 1749. A house, which belonged to Antonia de Madeiros, a member of perhaps the richest family of the time, became the core of Government House around which developed what is now called Government Estate. It was in the 1820 that Governor Thomas Munro (1820–1827) made Government House the official residence and now it called as Raj Bhavan and was once Guindy Lodge, the Governor’s country house.Guindy Lodge, it is believed, was built by Governor William Langhorne (1672–1678) in the early 1670s in garden space carved out of the Guindy Forest that had helped make St. Thomas’ mount a salubrious place for rest and recreation. When Langhorne left in 1678, he sold the property to the then Chief Merchant of Madras, Beri Chinna Venkatadri, the younger brother of one of the founders of the city, Beri Thimappa. When Chinna Venkatadri had problems with the East India Company, he gifted Guindy Lodge to the Company’s Madras Government.