The name Chembur seemingly comes from the word "Chimboree", which means "Large Crab" in Marathi.
It is suggested that Chembur is the same place referred to as Saimur by the Arab writers (915–1137 A.D.), Sibor in Cosmas Indicopleustes (535 A.D.), Chemula in the Kanheri cave inscriptions (300–500 A.D.), Symulla by the author of the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea (247 A.D.), Symulla or Timulla by Ptolemy (150 A.D.), and perhaps even Perimula by Pliny (77 A.D.). This is however disputed and is also said to be a reference to Chevul at the mouth of the Kundalika River on mainland Maharashtra.
The Mahul creek that we see today was once a flourishing harbor with big international ships arriving and departing from there. The hills near Trombay were much bigger and slowly over the years, diminished with its stone being used in various reclamations and fillings that became Bombay.
Stone inscriptions made in 1184 AD, found in 1882 mentioning about revenue of Vadhivli village in Chembur, do also exist.
Chembur in itself has been a very old village at a distance from the scattered islands of Mumbai and has glorious history as documented in ancient records.
There are inscriptions of the time when the Shilahara king Aparaditya I ruled the north Konkan from 1170–1197 AD. The inscriptions were found in 1882 and they have reference to the fact on how a garden in Vadivli village was granted for performing worship by the king on a fixed revenue.
The village has evolved over a period of time. Later, in the British era when Chembur was connected to Mumbai with the causeway. There was a small railway that once travelled from the suburb to Andheri and it had been originally built to carry construction materials.
Manuscript "Mahikavati Bakhar" that covers historical events in north Konkan of around 400 years has references to Chembur.
The existing local line was originally single track built for garbage transportation in 1906, and was opened to passenger traffic in the 1924. A lot of old garden bungalows that still exist in today’s Chembur are a legacy of that era.
The Kurla-Mankhurd section which also contained Chembur, was electrified in 1950, and suburban steam services were run on one track from 1951.
Chembur Railway Station is on the Harbor Line.
Prior to 1950, Chembur was a scenic idle village. Chembur was dotted by forested hills, hillocks, streamlets meandering aimlessly, meadows jostling with paddy fields and gently caressed by the backwaters of the Arabian Sea on its northern, eastern southern and western edges In fact, Chembur including Trombay was island.
The name Chembur is derived from the Marathi word "Chimboree" which means a large crab, From this we can infer that the place was infested with large crabs. As the Englishmen found it difficult to pronounce "Chimboree", the name Chembur stuck. The Trombay hills were a magnificent sight from far and near It was an equally awesome spectacle of the fields, villages and the sea from the peak of the Trombay hill. It is however, not possible now to have the view from the peak of the Trombay hill as it is out of bounds for security reasons.
For people from the city, Chembur was a favorite and proximate weekend picnic resort. People did not prefer to settle in Chembur as it was too far from the city. Moreover, there was no direct road or rail link to the city. It was also not in the municipal limits of Bombay. Therefore, Thane and Kalyan though away from the city work place, and had direct rail access to the city, and were better options than Chembur.
The government, in order to encourage people to settle in Chembur, allotted free-hold plots of approximately 600 square yards each to interested individuals at the rate of about 2 annas (about 12 paise) per square yard! Several individuals acquired such plots in the vicinity of the railway station and along the Central Avenue, Station Avenue and adjoining roads between 1925 and 1940. Some allotees acquired the land but did not build houses for want of funds. The collector then notified that in terms of the freehold agreement the allotees will have to construct the houses within a specified period failing which a penalty of about half-anna per square yard per annum will be imposed.
Quite expectedly, houses came up during 1930 and 1940 on all the allotted plots each house (ground floor only) costing about Rs. 3000 - Rs. 4000! Typically, the house would consist of a hall, with a verandah, two bedrooms, large kitchen, study, washing place an attic and a bathroom. The toilet would be outside the main house in the backyard. All window frames and doors were made from teak wood. Every door and window would have a ventilator above which could be opened when the door or window is shut due to rain. The internal and external walls were 18” thick. The height from floor to ceiling was usually 12 feet. Some houses had a terrace. Most houses had tiled roofs. Most houses in the Cherai, Gaothan and surrounding villages had tiled roof and those areas had no wide metalled roads. After completion of the house, the construction workers-men and women - mostly from Andhra would dance in the evening singing songs in their language in front of the owner’s family to bid good-bye! Large colourful rangoli decorations would be seen at the entrance of houses, especially during Divali and other festivals. That was middle-class housing which is Difficult to imagine today.
Chembur became part of Greater Bombay in 1945.
After independence, Chembur was one of the sites where refugee camps were set up to settle refugees after partition. The industrialization of Trombay during and after the war, led to the demand for housing and the growth of Chembur thereafter.
Chembur comprises large cosmopolitan residential societies of concrete buildings dating back to the early 1950s in addition to older villages such as Ghatla, Gaothan, Wadavli, Mahul, Gavanpada, Ambapada, etc.
The construction by the Bombay Housing Board in Station Colony (Subhash Nagar), the Shell Colony (Sahakar Nagar), and the Township Colony (Tilak Nagar) in 1955–58 transformed the area completely by shifting it from an industrial suburb to a residential one. The different colonies in Chembur are Pestom Sagar, Tilak Nagar, RCF Colony, BPCL, HPCL, Tata Colony, Chheda Nagar, Indian Oil Nagar, Shell Colony etc.
