The Crystal Palace

The 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park .

The façade of the original Crystal Palace

Queen Victoria opens the Great Exhibition

The Crystal Palace was a wrought iron and glass building^[1] originally erected in Hyde Park, London, England, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in the Palace's 990,000 square feet of exhibition space^[1] to display examples of the latest technology developed in the Industrial Revolution. Designed by Joseph Paxton, the Great Exhibition building was 1,850 feet (564 m) long, with an interior height of 408 feet (124 m).^[1] After the exhibition, the building was moved to a new park in a high, healthy and wealthy area of London called Sydenham Hill, an area not much changed today from the well-heeled suburb full of large Victorian villas that it was during its Victorian heyday. The Crystal Palace was enlarged and stood from 1854 until 1936, when it was destroyed by fire. It attracted many thousands of visitors from all levels of society. The name Crystal Palace (coined by the satirical magazine Punch)^[2] was later used to denote this area of south London and the park that surrounds the site, home of the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre.

Original Hyde Park building

The huge, modular wood,^[3] glass and iron structure at the top of Sydenham Hill was originally erected in Hyde Park in London to house The Great Exhibition of 1851, embodying the products of many countries throughout the world.^[1] The Crystal Palace's creator, Joseph Paxton, was knighted in recognition of his work. Paxton had been the head gardener at Chatsworth, in Derbyshire. There he had experimented with glass and iron in the creation of large greenhouses, and had seen something of their strength and durability, knowledge that he applied to the plans for the Great Exhibition building. Planners had been looking for strength, durability, simplicity of construction and speed — and this they got from Paxton's ideas. The project was engineered by Sir William Cubitt. Full-size, living elm trees in the park were enclosed within the central exhibition hall near the 27-foot (8 m)-tall Crystal Fountain. Sparrows became a nuisance. H.M Queen Victoria mentioned this problem to the Duke of Wellington, who offered the famous solution, "Sparrowhawks, Ma'am." The Crystal Palace was built by about 5,000 navvies (up to 2,000 on site at once)^[4] The ironwork contractors were Fox and Henderson. The 900,000 square feet (84,000 m²) of glass was provided by the Chance Brothers glassworks in Smethwick, Birmingham. They were the only glassworks capable of fulfilling such a large order, and had to bring in labour from France to meet it in time. The Crystal Palace also featured the first public conveniences, the Retiring Rooms, in which sanitary engineer George Jennings installed his Monkey Closets. During the exhibition 827,280 visitors paid one penny each to use them, and for this they got a clean seat, a towel, a comb and a shoe shine. Hence the euphemism "to spend a penny".

Relocation

Relocation commemorative medallion

The life of the Great Exhibition was limited to six months, and something then had to be done with the building.^[5] Against the wishes of Parliamentary opponents, the edifice was re-erected on a property named Penge Place that had been excised from Penge Common atop Sydenham Hill.^[1] It was much modified and enlarged so much that it extended beyond the boundary of Penge Place, which was also the boundary between Surrey and Kent. Within two years, Queen Victoria again performed an opening ceremony. The new site hosted concerts, exhibits, and public entertainment.^[1] Several localities claim to be the area to which the building was relocated. The street address of the Crystal Palace was Sydenham SE26 but the actual building and parklands were in Penge. At the time of relocation most of the buildings were in Croydon, as were a majority of the grounds. In 1899 the county boundary was moved, transferring the entire site to Penge Urban District in Kent. The site is now within the Crystal Palace Ward of the London Borough of Bromley. Two railway stations were opened to serve the permanent exhibition. The Low Level Station is still in use as Crystal Palace railway station, and part of the High Level Station, from which a subway gave access to the Parade area, can also still be seen, with its Italian mosaic roofing. This subway is a Grade II listed building. The South Gate is served by Penge West Railway Station. For some time this station was on an atmospheric railway. This is often confused with a 550-metre pneumatic passenger railway which was exhibited at the Crystal Palace in 1864. See also Thomas Webster Rammell There is an apocryphal story, popular among local schoolchildren, that Crystal Palace High Level Station was closed because a commuter train was trapped by a tunnel collapse and remains there to this day. In reality the closure was a scheduled part of the decline of the railway network in the 1950s. This may have arisen as a result of the experimental pneumatic railway 1864, to which a similar story is attached. See below and also Thomas Webster Rammell the engineer behind the project.

Water features

Illustration of a Paxton water feature at Chatsworth.

Joseph Paxton was first and foremost a gardener, and his layout of gardens, fountains, terraces and cascades left no doubt as to his ability. One thing he did have a problem with was water supply. Such was his enthusiasm that thousands of gallons of water were needed in order to feed the myriad fountains and cascades which abounded in the Crystal Palace park. The two main jets were 250 feet (76 m) high. Initially water towers were constructed, but the weight of water in the raised tanks caused them to collapse. Isambard Kingdom Brunel was consulted and came up with the plans for two mighty water towers, one at the north and the other at the south end of the building. Each supported a tremendous load of water, which was gathered from three reservoirs, at either end of and in the middle of the park. Two years later, the grand fountains and cascades were opened, again in the presence of the Queen, who got wet when a gust of wind swept mists of spray over the Royal carriage.

Attractions

The exhibits included almost every marvel of the Victorian Age, encompassing the products of many countries throughout the world. There was pottery and porcelain; ironwork and furniture; steam hammers and hydraulic presses; perfumes and pianos; houses and diving suits; firearms and barometers; fabrics and fireworks.

Waterhouse Hawkins' Iguanodon statue

Among the attractions was the first ever dinosaur exhibition, life-size (but anatomically inaccurate) models designed and made by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, situated by the lower lakes, near the Anerley entrance and still there in 2007. Hawkins held a dinner party for 22 guests inside the hollow body of the Iguanodon. The dinosaurs were renovated in a £4,000,000 project in 2002, and were officially unveiled by the Duke of Edinburgh. In 1857, the Handel Festival was relocated to Crystal Palace. This consisted of a three-day event in which massed choirs, consisting of several thousand singers, together with leading soloists, orchestra and conductor, performed Handel's oratorios The Messiah, Israel in Egypt and Judas Maccabaeus on successive nights. In 1859, the Centenary Festival was held, after which the event became triennial. The first live recordings of a public concert in Britain were made on wax cylinders during a performance of Israel in Egypt at Crystal Palace in 1888. Queen Victoria loved the place and said she found it "enchanting". This was to some extent due to the degree of esteem in which she held the ultimate architect of its fortunes, her husband, Prince Albert. Most FA Cup finals in the early years of the competition were held in Crystal Palace Park. The last to be held there was in 1914, when George V became the first reigning monarch to watch the final. Even before the creation of the Crystal Palace F.C., a team bearing the name Crystal Palace played in the competition, its players coming from the staff of the Crystal Palace. The London County Cricket Club, founded by the Crystal Palace Company, played first-class cricket in the park between 1900 and 1908.

Decline

While the original palace cost £150,000 the relocation to Sydenham cost £1,300,000 - burdening the company with a debt it never repaid,^[6] partly because admission fees were depressed by the inability to cater for Sunday visitors: many people worked every day except the Sabbath,^[7] when the Palace had always been closed.^[8] No amount of protest had any effect: the Lord's Day Observance Society (as today) held that people should not be encouraged to work at the Palace or drive transport on Sunday, and that if people wanted to visit, then their employers should give them time off during the working week. This, naturally, they would not do. However the Palace was open on Sundays by May 1861, when there were 40,000 visitors on a Sunday alone.^[9] In 1911, the Festival of Empire was held at the building to mark the coronation of George V and Queen Mary. The building fell into disrepair and two years later the 1st Earl of Plymouth purchased it, to save it from developers. A public subscription quickly re-purchased it for the nation. During World War I it was used as a naval training establishment under the name of HMS Victory VI, informally known as HMS Crystal Palace. At the cessation of hostilities it was re-opened as the first Imperial War Museum. Sir Henry Buckland took over as General Manager, and things began to look up, many former attractions being resumed, including the Thursday evening displays of fireworks by Brocks.

Destruction by fire

But on 30 November 1936 came the final catastrophe, fire. Within hours, the Palace was destroyed, the fire being seen for miles with the night sky lit up by the flames. Just as in 1866 when the north transept burnt down, the building was not adequately insured to cover the cost of rebuilding. The South Tower had been used for tests by television pioneer John Logie Baird for his mechanical television experiments and much of his work was destroyed in the fire. Winston Churchill on his way home from the House of Commons said, "This is the end of an age". All that was left standing were the two water towers, and these were taken down during World War II. The reason given was that the Germans could have used them to navigate their way to London. The north one was dynamited, while the south one was dismantled as it was very close to other buildings. After the war, the site was used for a number of purposes. Between 1953 and 1973 a motor car racing circuit operated on the site, with some race meetings supported by the Greater London Council.

Influence

The Crystal Palace was the prototype for several other buildings, including the New York Crystal Palace of 1853, the Glaspalast in Munich of 1854, and the Palácio de Cristal in Porto of 1865. The New York Crystal Palace was built for the Exhibition of the Industry of All Nations for the 1853 World's Fair on a site behind the Croton Distributing Reservoir, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues on 42nd Street (today's Bryant Park). The building was shaped as a Greek cross by the architects George Carstensen and Charles Gildemeister. The New York Crystal Palace was crowned by a dome 100 feet (30 m) in diameter and consisted of iron and glass only. It burned down in 15 minutes on 5 October 1858. Only three years after The Crystal Palace in London the German Glaspalast in Munich was opened for the Erste Allgemeine Deutsche Industrieausstellung on 15 July 1854. The Glaspalast, ordered by King Maximillian II of Bavaria and designed by August von Voit, hosted the biggest art exhibitions and international trade fairs before it burned down in 1931. The fire in the Glaspalast damaged more than 1,000 paintings and sculptures and destroyed more than 110 artworks from the early 19th century including many paintings from Caspar David Friedrich, Moritz von Schwind, Karl Blechen and Philipp Otto Runge. Oxford Rewley Road railway station of 1851 used the same construction technology. The design of the Crystal Palace has also inspired many latter-day construction projects, such as the Dallas, Texas-based Infomart and the Eaton Centre shopping mall in downtown Toronto. The Crystal Palace Foundation was created in 1979 to preserve its memory and consider its future.

The Crystal Palace in popular culture

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The Crystal Palace made a strong impression on visitors coming from all over Europe, including a number of writers. It soon became a symbol of modernity and civilization, hailed by some and decried by others.

• Robert Baden-Powell organized a meeting of Boy Scouts there in 1909, when he first noticed how many girls were interested in scouting, leading to the founding of Girl Guide and Girl Scouts.^[10][11]
• French author Valéry Larbaud left a short text describing his impressions of the Crystal Palace.
• The Crystal Palace appears a full chapter in the Edward Rutherfurd novel "London" where it is pivitol part of the books sub-plot in that chapter.
• In What Is to Be Done?, Russian author and philosopher Nikolai Chernyshevsky pledges to transform the society into a Crystal Palace thanks to a socialist revolution.
• Fyodor Dostoevsky implicitly replied to Chernyshevsky in Notes from Underground. The narrator thinks that human nature will prefer destruction and chaos to the harmony symbolized by the Crystal Palace.
• The Palace (or a similar structure) was in the 2004 anime film Steam Boy, and it also featured in the 2005 anime series Eikoku Koi Monogatari Emma (Emma-A Victorian Romance).
• Following damage during World War II, the replacement for the East window in St John the Evangelist in Penge High Street features an idyllic view of the local landscape at the time the church was built, including the Crystal Palace.
• The Crystal Palace serves as the location in the finale of the fantasy book Ptolemy's Gate.
• The Crystal Palace is the name of a nightclub run by Chrysalis in the Wild Cards fictional shared universe.
• Italian writer Alessandro Baricco incorporated the Crystal Palace into his novel Land of glass using a mixture of fiction and fact.
• German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk uses the Crystal Palace as a metaphor for the European project.
• Contemporary artist Tori Amos mentions the Crystal Palace in her song Winter, singing, "Mirror mirror, where's the Crystal Palace? But I only can see myself."
• Having previously appeared in at least one Doctor Who comic strip (printed in the Radio Times), the Great Exhibition was properly featured as the setting for one of the audio adventures of Paul McGann's Eighth Doctor in 2005: Other Lives, which also featured as a character in the drama a contemporary figure associated with events, the then aged Duke of Wellington.
• Famed children's author E. Nesbit made many references to the Crystal Palace in her work, most notably in the short story "The Ice Dragon," which commences with the child protagonists watching the Crystal Palace fireworks display from their backyard.
• The Crystal Palace Restaurant in the Walt Disney World Resort (Magic Kingdom, Main Street, USA) is inspired by the Crystal Palace.
• In book 3 of The Invisible Detective series by Justin Richards, the finale takes place at the Crystal Palace and it is the final destruction of the Ghost army that causes the fire that destroys the palace.
• In the Book The Death Collector, the Crystal Palace Gardens and Large Dinosaur statues contain a secret which leads to the solving of the mystery in the book.
• In September 2007 the Anglo-Dutch martial neoclassical music group, H.E.R.R., released a mini-album concerning the rise and fall of the Crystal Palace, entitled .
• When Queen Victoria's avatar is on-screen in the computer game Civilization IV, the palace can be seen in the background.
• There is a scene in the 1979 Sean Connery movie The First Great Train Robbery wherein Connery's character strolls around outside the Crystal Palace whilst a fireworks display is being held. The Palace is a miniature used in a foreground projection shot.

Further reading

• Dickinson's Comprehensive Pictures of the Great Exhibition of 1851, Dickinson Brothers, London, 1854.^[1]

See also

• List of buildings See for other famous or notable buildings
• Greenhouses
• Crystal Palace F.C.
• Crystal Palace L.F.C.

References

External links

• Early photographs of the Crystal Palace by Philip Henry Delamotte
• Crystal Palace Park - map of the park as was until recently
• The Crystal Palace, sources from www.victorianlondon.org
• Eddie Richardson's page on Sir Joseph Paxton - includes photographs
• Map sources for the park and surrounding area including Victorian maps showing the palace
• Russell Potter's Crystal Palace Page, with information on the Baird Television studios
• Crystal Palace - an introduction - written by Russell Potter at Citizendium
• A 3D computer model of the Crystal Palace with images and animation
• History of The Crystal Palace
• The destruction of The Crystal Palace @ Ward's Book of Days
• 1936 Crystal Palace Fire - London Fire Journal

Coordinates: 51.41987° N 0.07067° W