"In the 18th Century i.e. in the area where the tall Bank and hotel buildings and the World Trade Centre loom to the skies, it was no doubt another open space by the ocean where the ruling Dutch and the natives gathered for various purposes. After the British captured Colombo from the Dutch they had erected here five blocks of barracks for garrison troops in the year 1875 which complex came to be known as the Echelon Square. But before the capture the area had been known as the Kaffirs Veldt, a term it had earned later due to a hotch potch of turbulent events connected to the Kaffir labour force."