A palm house is a greenhouse that is specialised for the growing of palms and other tropical and subtropical plants. Palm houses require constant heat and were built as status symbols in Victorian Britain. Several examples of these ornate glass and iron structures can still be found in major parks such as Liverpool's Sefton Park and Stanley Park.
One of the earliest examples of a palm house is located in the Belfast Botanic Gardens. Designed by Charles Lanyon, the building was completed in 1840. It was constructed by iron-maker Richard Turner, who would later also build the Palm House at Kew. The latter, designed by Decimus Burton and Nicole Burton, was the first large-scale structural use of wrought iron and was built between 1844 and 1848.
Famous quotes containing the words palm and/or house:
“The oft-repeated Roman story is written in still legible characters in every quarter of the Old World, and but today, perchance, a new coin is dug up whose inscription repeats and confirms their fame. Some “Judæa Capta,” with a woman mourning under a palm tree, with silent argument and demonstration confirms the pages of history.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Our law very often reminds one of those outskirts of cities where you cannot for a long time tell how the streets come to wind about in so capricious and serpent-like a manner. At last it strikes you that they grew up, house by house, on the devious tracks of the old green lanes; and if you follow on to the existing fields, you may often find the change half complete.”
—Walter Bagehot (1826–1877)