Cargills & Millars Buildings (Colombo)
The old Cargills & Millars Buildings (Sinhala: කාර්ගිල්ස් හා මිලර්ස් ගොඩනැගිල්ල) are located No. 40 on the corner of the Sir Baron Jayatilaka Mawatha and the York Street in Colombo Fort, Sri Lanka. They are considered to be some of the oldest department stores in the country (Welandawe & Weerasinghe, 2016). History A Dutch building is said to be on the land where the present Cargills & Millars buildings are located and it had been occupied by Sir Frederick North (1766-1827), the first British Governor of Ceylon from 1798 to 1805 (Rajapakshe et al., 2018). In 1844, a British businessman William Miller started his company at this premises by replacing the old Dutch building and in 1896, it was acquired by David Sime Cargill, a Scottish businessman who headed the popular Cargills & Company (Manathunga, 2016; Rajapakshe et al., 2018). During the period 1902-1906, the present two-storied Cargills building following the renaissance architecture was built by Walker Sons & C…
