A building rarely disappears just because the people who built it are gone. Long after an empire packs up and leaves, the walls, arches and roofs it built tend to stay standing, waiting for someone new to find a use for them.

Across Vidarbha, a number of structures raised during British rule have survived in exactly this way, though almost none of them still do the job they were originally built for.

A courtroom might now be a government office. A private residence might now hold classrooms full of students. A workshop built to repair trains might now be the reason visitors come to see trains at all. What ties these buildings together is not how they look, but how completely their purpose has changed while the structure itself has carried on.

Judicial buildings make a natural starting point, since courts were among the first permanent structures the colonial administration built in Vidarbha. Three of them, spread across three different districts, no longer function as courts at all.

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1. Amravati's Small Causes Court Now Houses the Sub-Divisional Officer

The district administration's own account of Amravati's growth under British rule lists several government structures built as the city's administration expanded. A railway station went up in 1859, a commissioner's bungalow followed in 1860, and a tahsil office and the main post office were added in 1871. A Small Causes Court came next, constructed in 1886 to handle certain categories of civil disputes. What makes this entry stand out is what the district's own account says happened to the building afterwards. It identifies the old Small Causes Court as the office now used by the Sub-Divisional Officer, a post that belongs to the revenue and executive side of district administration rather than the judiciary. That amounts to a genuine change of function rather than just a change of occupant, since a Small Causes Court and an SDO's office answer to different parts of government altogether. There was no dramatic conversion into a museum or a cultural venue involved. The building simply carried on doing government work while the nature of that work moved from deciding civil cases to running day-to-day administration.

2. Wardha's First District Court Premises Became a Science College

The District and Sessions Court at Wardha was established in 1911, while the region was still under British administration. According to the court's own institutional history, its work initially began from the building that later came to be identified as Jankidevi Bajaj College of Science and Education. That detail needs a careful reading, because the college did not exist yet in 1911. Shiksha Mandal, the organisation that runs the college, records that Jankidevi Bajaj College of Science was established only in 1962, with the specific aim of bringing science education to Wardha. The institution is known today as Bajaj College of Science. The same set of premises therefore turns up at two very different points in Wardha's history, first as the starting point of the district judiciary and later, decades on, as the home of laboratories and classrooms. One caution is worth adding. Available court records confirm that the building was used by the court from 1911, but they stop short of proving it was originally designed as a courthouse rather than simply pressed into service as one. What can be stated with confidence is that a building documented as Wardha's first District and Sessions Court premises went on to house a science college founded half a century later.

3. Nagpur's Old High Court Building Is Now a Protected Heritage Site

The Old High Court building in Nagpur formed part of an important administrative and judicial complex during British rule, built between 1891 and 1893 to house the office of the Judicial Commissioner. For decades afterwards, its identity was bound up entirely with the justice system, first as the Judicial Commissioner's office and later as the seat of the High Court itself, before the court moved into its present building. That role has since given way to something else. The building was declared a Centrally Protected Monument, which placed conservation rather than judicial business at the centre of its future. It has also hosted activities that have nothing to do with law. In June 2021, the Archaeological Survey of India and the South Central Zone Cultural Centre held International Day of Yoga events on the premises, including performances of traditional Maharashtrian martial arts. The move to a new identity has been anything but smooth. Parts of the structure have been formally declared unsafe for occupation, one of its porches has already collapsed, and successive years have brought fresh rounds of argument over funding and responsibility for repairs. Nagpur's Old High Court no longer works as an ordinary courthouse. Its main identity today is that of a protected historic structure that keeps needing more conservation than it has so far received.

4. Nagpur's British Residency Became a Government Arts College

Long before Nagpur's Civil Lines filled up with government offices and college campuses, British political authority in the Bhonsle kingdom needed a base for its Resident. The present campus of the Vasantrao Naik Government Institute of Arts and Social Sciences, long associated with Morris College, occupies that very site. According to the institute's own history, the building was constructed around 1807 for the Resident Officer at the court of the Bhonsle king, and was later used as Government House. That places its origins in the East India Company period, decades before the formal start of Crown rule in 1858. Its next major role was completely different. The old Residency Hall was repaired at government expense and altered to accommodate a college, and Morris College moved into the building in July 1911, according to the institute's records. Educational use has continued ever since, and the old Residency became part of a functioning college campus rather than the base of a colonial political officer. The change is striking because a British Residency was never just a large house. The Resident formed part of the Company's political machinery in princely states and kingdoms, so the building's original purpose was tied directly to colonial diplomacy and control. More than a century after students replaced colonial residents, the site remains associated with higher education rather than politics.

5. A Collector's Bungalow in Sironcha Is Now a Government Rest House

Sironcha sits at the southern edge of Gadchiroli district, some distance from the government buildings usually associated with Vidarbha's colonial past. Maharashtra's tourism department identifies the structure here as a British-era rest house. Its earlier role was different. According to the department's own record, the building was used during British rule as the Collector's bungalow, the residence linked to one of the colonial district administration's most senior officials. It later came to be identified simply as a rest house. That is a smaller change than converting a court into a college, but the shift in institutional role is still meaningful. A Collector's bungalow was an official residence tied to administrative authority, while a government rest house offers temporary accommodation rather than serving as the permanent base of a district's top official. The location of this particular building adds another layer of interest, because most discussions of colonial-era buildings in Vidarbha focus heavily on Nagpur's Civil Lines. The Sironcha structure is a reminder that the colonial administration's reach extended much further into what is now the eastern part of the region than that Nagpur-centred picture suggests. Its present identity as a rest house preserves the building without requiring it to keep serving the hierarchy it was originally built for.

6. A Steam Locomotive Shed in Motibagh Became a Railway Museum

South East Central Railway's own records state that the Motibagh Workshop was set up in 1879 to meet the maintenance needs of railway rolling stock, placing the site firmly within the colonial period. Part of that railway complex has since taken on a very different job. Nagpur's Narrow Gauge Rail Museum occupies an old steam locomotive shed on Kamptee Road, and instead of locomotives arriving there for their working lives, retired railway equipment is now preserved for visitors to see. The museum holds locomotives, coaches, photographs, railway documents, signalling equipment and other material connected with the region's railway history. A 1916 Bagnall steam locomotive and an 1899 wooden royal carriage are among the heritage items on display. Its role has grown beyond a conventional set of museum galleries over time. After a serious fire damaged parts of the complex in March 2024, the site was restored and reopened, and now includes a toy train, garden areas, facilities for children, food outlets and space for events. This represents one of the most complete changes of use in this entire group. A structure built for the upkeep of railway machinery became a place where retired railway technology is itself the attraction, and where the machines that once arrived there to be worked on are now the reason people come to look.

7. Nagpur's Settlement Commissionerate Became a Fire and Disaster Training Site

The old Settlement Commissionerate building on Palm Road, in Nagpur's Civil Lines, has had more than one institutional life. Its name alone records an earlier administrative function connected with land settlement, the process of surveying and recording rights over land. By the years after Independence, the building had a completely different occupant in the form of the National Fire Service College, which was set up to provide professional training to fire service personnel across the country.

A structure once associated with revenue and settlement administration therefore became a specialised training campus for firefighters. The college later moved to a larger, purpose-built campus on Takli Feeder Road, and the older Palm Road building went on to host training activity connected with disaster response. Public records do not always agree neatly on the exact current use of the older building, since different official documents have described it in slightly different ways at different points, which is worth acknowledging rather than glossing over. What is firmly established is the direction of change itself. A colonial administrative building built for land settlement work was repurposed first for fire service education and subsequently for training connected with disaster response, moving further still from the land records office it started out as.

8. Vidhan Bhavan Went From a Colonial Provincial Building to Maharashtra's Legislature

Nagpur's Vidhan Bhavan needs a slightly different reading of "a different purpose" than the other buildings on this list, because it has never stopped being connected with government. What has changed is which branch of government it serves, and under which political system.

Published accounts of the building trace its origins to the colonial administration of the Central Provinces and Berar, the province of which Nagpur served as capital under British rule. After Independence and the later reorganisation of Indian states, that colonial provincial structure ceased to exist; Vidarbha became part of Maharashtra, and Nagpur took on its present position as the state's second capital. The building went on to become associated with the winter session of the Maharashtra Legislature, and the Nagpur district administration continues to describe the city as the venue for that annual session. The distinction here is as much constitutional as architectural. A complex once connected with administering a British Indian province now serves elected representatives of Maharashtra instead. The old structure is itself approaching another change.

In April 2026, the Maharashtra government gave formal approval for a new Vidhan Bhavan complex costing more than one thousand crore rupees, intended to replace the existing British-era building with new Assembly and Legislative Council chambers along with other legislature-related facilities. This makes Vidhan Bhavan different from the college and museum conversions described earlier in this list. The government never left the premises. It is the political system running the building that changed, and it may soon change premises altogether.

Colonial buildings are sometimes discussed as though keeping a structure standing means freezing it at one particular point in its history. What has happened across Vidarbha suggests something closer to the opposite.

Continued use, not preservation in a fixed sense, is often what has kept these walls standing at all, and that continued use has taken government buildings in directions nobody serving in them a century ago would have predicted.

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