India, May 17 -- On a stretch of Pusa Road where concrete buildings now jostle for visual space, one house holds its ground. Number 4, a quiet Deco relic, stands as the last surviving witness to an architectural experiment that once dreamed of a modern Delhi. Its story started just before Independence in the 1940s, when the land was earmarked by the British for Electric Commission officers' quarters - a plan later abandoned. It was then acquired by Lala Sri Ram's Delhi Cloth Mills, which sought to transform the area into an enclave of Deco homes. The first, House #1, was designed by architect Mohinder Singh as a prototype that would set the tone for the rest. But it reportedly fell out of favour, and a new, anonymous architect took over. Fo...