The Crystal Palace was a glass and cast iron structure built in London, England, for the Great Exhibition of 1851. The building was designed by Sir...
Crystal Palace, Joseph Paxton, London, 1851 As I had discussed in my post concerning suspension bridges from the nineteenth century, new materials were starting to gain popularity amongst construct…
On Saturday the girls and I took a trip to Crystal Palace Park in South London with my brother. I hadn’t been to the park since I was a little girl so it was lovely to walk around and explore it with my girls. The park is the former location of The Crystal Palace, a vast glass and steel structure built in 1851 which was the home of the great exhibition in Hyde Park, before being moved and rebuilt in South East London in 1854. The exhibition was the idea of Prince Albert and housed displays of achievement relating to the Industrial Revolution. Money from the exhibition went towards the building of the museums at Kennsington. The structure remained on the site until 1936 when it was razed to the ground after catching fire. Many South Londoners of my grandparents generation remember seeing the flames burning through the night as the blaze raged on. The Crystal Palace at it’s new home in Sydenham in 1854. All that remains of the building is the terraces which lead up to it, these are now in a state of disrepair, but do give a wonderful sense of what was once there and we […]
Originally erected in Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was on the section south of Rotten Row and east of West Carriage Drive with the mid-point opposite Rutland Gate. The cast-iron and glass building was then taken down and reconstructed, modified and enlarged, in 1854 at Sydenham Hill in what was then known as Penge Park. The area around then became known as Crystal Palace. In 1936 the Palace burnt down and was not rebuilt. What remains are the terraces, the steps and some sphinxes. The BBC reported that the UK's first fatal car accident happened at 'Dolphin Terrace' at the Crystal Palace in 1896 but we can't discover exactly where that was. The distinctive curved roof above the central transept, running north-south, was added to the design of the building to enable several elm trees in Hyde Park to be retained within the building rather than felled. The trees are not there now and were presumably lost to Dutch Elm disease some time 1970-90. (But London does still have elm trees - see the Londonist article and this pdf with map.) Some good pictures and quotes at: The Library Time Machine. Caroline's Miscellany on the model of Crystal Palace - in Paris. Chapter IX of Dorothy Richardson's 1915 'Pilgrimage Volume 1, Backwater' describes a summer evening visit to Crystal Palace with fireworks, a calendar-clock, a winter garden, a concert room, etc.
Artist: Philip Henry Delamotte (British, 1821–1889). Artist: Henry Angelo Ludovico Negretti (British, born Italy, 1818–1879). Date: 1854. Medium: Album...
Marc Riboud, London, England, 1954
Visiting London this Christmas? Step off the tourist trail with our guide to some sights hidden around the capital.
Since a 1936 fire destroyed the Crystal Palace on Penge Common, near Sydenham Hill in south-east London, the building that once housed the 1851 Great Exhibition has never been rebuilt.
Exhibition centre and landmark Crystal Palace ablaze during the fire which destroyed it.
An important collection has moved across campus and is now available at the Maryland Room, in Hornbake Library’s Special Collections. You can visit us anytime during our open hours to learn m…
Image 12 of 14 from gallery of AD Classics: The Crystal Palace / Joseph Paxton. Map of the grounds of The Crystal Place in Sydenham Hill,1862. © Wikimedia Commons
