In 1758, one year after their decisive win in Battle of Plassey, the British East India Company commenced construction of the new Fort William in the center of the village Gobindapur.

The fort was completed in 1773.The tiger-haunted jungle which cut off the village of Chowringhee from the river was cleared, and gave way to the wide grassy stretch of the Maidan of which Calcutta is so proud.

The formation of this airy expanse and the filling up of the creek which had cut off the settlement in the south, led the European inhabitants to gradually forsake the narrow limits of the old palisades.

Cotton wrote,The great Maidan presents a most refreshing appearance to the eye, the heavy night dew, even in the hot season, keeping the grass green.

[12]The park is considered the historical and cultural center of Kolkata, as well as one of the city's most popular tourist attractions and a hub of leisure and entertainment for Calcuttans.

The Maidan stretches from the Raj Bhavan building on the Esplanade in the north to the National Library on Belvedere Road in Alipore in the south.

On Council House Street, at one corner of the Maidan, was the long-defunct Fort William College,[15] which played a pioneering role in the development of many of the Indian languages, particularly Bengali.

[20][21] Over time, statues of Indians, including Mahatma Gandhi, Ram Mohan Roy, Chittaranjan Das, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose, Sri Aurobindo, Matangini Hazra, Pritilata Waddedar, Indira Gandhi, and Gostho Pal, were erected to occupy the vacant plinths or plots.

Geoffrey Moorhouse in 1978 presents a vivid description of a Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPI(M)) rally on the Maidan: "They generally start about tea time, they rarely finish before nine o’clock… they are masterly exhibitions of organisation… The platform is high so that everyone on it will be visible at a great distance, and it is large enough to accommodate twenty or thirty… it is illuminated with spotlights, it flutters with red flags, and it has huge red backcloth upon which Lenin is straining resolutely forward from a thicket of banners.

Everything is perfectly under control… as they sit there upon the ground, row after attentive row of them, a brigade of young women to the fore… distantly across the Maidan people have climbed trees and others are packed standing on top of the Esplanade tram shelters… there must be a hundred thousand here altogether… the leaders come through the guard of honour to the platform…it is only when Promode Dasgupta and Hare Krishna Konar are having their say… theirs is the oratory that sends men delirious with dreams, that can set a rabble to a march of destruction… when the speeches are done, the leaders begin to sing the Internationale… all over the crowd torches are swiftly lit and held high in flaring salute…"[29] Cited sources Further reading