Colombo Fort Chatham Street financial district: Victorian neoclassical banking architecture and vaults?

Chatham Street, York Street, and Sir Baron Jayathilake Mawatha form the historic financial and mercantile banking core of Colombo Fort. Constructed during the late 19th-century British plantation boom, monumental institutions—such as the 1895 Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), the Chartered Bank, and the National Bank of India—were designed in high Victorian neoclassical and Edwardian baroque styles. Facades feature rusticated granite ashlar plinths, colossal Corinthian stone colonnades, and deep shaded verandas. Subterranean bullion vaults were engineered with 1-meter-thick reinforced brick-and-granite walls fitted with heavy steel vault doors imported from Chubb & Sons of London.