Cargills York Street Colombo

The building on the corner of York Street has been there in one form or another since the seventeenth century. It began as the residence of Captain Pieter Sluysken, the Dutch military commander of Galle, and Frederick North, the first British Governor, lived in it briefly before moving to something roomier at Hulftsdorp. Two things survive from Sluysken's house and stand by the ground floor lift: a foundation stone dated 1684, and a wooden statue of Minerva — Roman goddess of wisdom, the arts, and trade.

Cargills bought it in 1896. The present building went up between 1902 and 1906, designed by Edward Skinner and built by Walker Sons and Company. By 1909 the firm employed thirty-two Europeans and six hundred other staff, which tells you something about how the colony counted people.

It became a public company in 1946, on a bid by Chittampalam Gardiner — the year before independence, and among the first of the great colonial houses to change hands to Ceylonese.