The Crystal Palace

For other uses, see 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 an iron and glass building originally erected in London's Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. More than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world were gathered inside to display examples of the latest technology developed in the Industrial Revolution. Designed by Joseph Paxton, the Great Exhibition building was 1,850 feet in length (560 m) and 110 feet (33 m) tall.

After the exhibition the building was moved to what is now Upper Norwood where it was enlarged, and stood from 1854 until 1936. It attracted many thousands of visitors from all levels of society. The name Crystal Palace was coined by the satirical magazine Punch. The name 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 glass and iron structure at the top of Sydenham Hill was originally erected in Hyde Park in London to house The Great Exhibition, embodying the products of many countries throughout the world.

This huge temple of glass house the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Kensington Gardens in central London, and was then moved to the high ridge overlooking south London, to which area it gave its name. In LONDON, it forms part of the story in 'The Crystal Palace', 'The suffragette', and 'The Blitz'.Visit http://www.edwardrutherfurd.com/us/index/item.php?i=T65

Seen in its grand magnificence, the new Crystal Palace again displayed the genius of its creator, Joseph Paxton, who was knighted in recognition of his work. Paxton had been head gardener at Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, where he had befriended its owner, the Duke of Devonshire. Here he had experimented with glass and iron in the creation of large greenhouses, and had seen something of their strength and durability. He applied this knowledge to the plans for the Great Exhibition building — with astounding results. Planners had been looking for strength, durability, simplicity of construction and speed — and this they got from Paxton's ideas. According to the 2004 Encyclopædia Britannica, "Paxton was partly inspired by the organic structure of the Amazonian lily Victoria regia, which he successfully cultivated". Living elm trees in the park were enclosed in the central exhibition space near the 27-foot-tall Crystal Fountain.

The Crystal Palace was built by about 5,000 navvies who worked very hard for very little and completed their tasks quickly. Their welfare became the concern of Catherine Marsh, who noticed the poor conditions they were working in and treatment they received: she spared no effort to see that they received fair and just treatment. She made sure that meals were provided for them.

The ironwork contractors were Fox, 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.

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. 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. It was much modified and enlarged, and within two years Queen Victoria again performed an opening ceremony. Several places claim to be the location 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. The entire 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 (m) pneumatic passenger railway which was exhibited at the Crystal Palace in 1864.

There is an apocryphal story, popular amongst 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.

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 just about 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' Megalosaurus 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 twenty-two guests inside the hollow body of one of the Iguanodons. The dinosaurs were renovated in a £4,000,000 project in 2002, and were officially unveiled by the Duke of Edinburgh.

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 beloved 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.

For a few years first-class cricket was played in the Park, by the London County Cricket Club.

Decline

The fortunes of the Crystal Palace began to decline when money was not available for maintenance. This was to a large extent due to the failure to obtain sufficient money by way of admission fees, in turn due to the inability to cater for a large portion of the population. The mass of people who would gladly visit the Palace were unable to do so because the only day on which they could get away from work was Sunday, and Sunday was the day on which the Palace was firmly closed. 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.

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 for the nation to save it from developers.

In the Great War 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

On 30 November 1936 came the final catastrophe. Within hours, fire consumed all that had stood for a mighty empire and boundless imagination. 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 was 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.

The Crystal Palace Foundation was created in 1979 to keep alive the memory and respect for this epic age in Britain's history. Discussion regarding its future continues, various plans have been put forward but none have been put into action on the Top Site.

Prototype

The Crystal Palace was the prototype for several other exhibition buildings, including the New York Crystal Palace of 1853 and the Glaspalast in Munich of 1854.

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.

Oxford Rewley Road railway station of 1851 used the same construction technology.

The Crystal Palace in popular culture

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 here in 1909, when he first noticed how many girls were interested in Scouting, leading to the founding of Girl Guide and Girl Scouts.
• French author Valéry Larbaud left a short text describing his impressions of the Crystal Palace.
• 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.
• The distinctive skyscraper at 30 St Mary Axe, London, picked up the nickname of The Crystal Phallus due to its shape, and as a play on the name Crystal Palace.
• 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.

See also

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

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
• 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
• [www.edwardrutherfurd.com/ Official Website of the author Edward Rutherfurd]

References

51.41987°N 0.07067°W / 51.41987; -0.07067