The Crystal Palace

The Crystal Palace was a cast-iron and plate-glass building 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 (92,000 m2) of exhibition space to display examples of the latest technology developed in the Industrial Revolution. Designed by Joseph Paxton, the Great Exhibition building was 1,851 feet (564 m) long, with an interior height of 128 feet (39 m). Because of the recent invention of the cast plate glass method in 1848, which allowed for large sheets of cheap but strong glass, it was at the time the largest amount of glass ever seen in a building and astonished visitors with its clear walls and ceilings that did not require interior lights, thus a "Crystal Palace".

After the exhibition, the building was rebuilt in an enlarged form on Penge Common next to Sydenham Hill, an affluent South London suburb full of large villas. It stood there from 1854 until its destruction by fire in 1936. The name Crystal Palace (the satirical magazine Punch usually gets the credit for coining the phrase) 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. A re-working of the building, known as The Garden Palace, was constructed in Sydney in 1879, but this building too was destroyed by fire.

Read more about The Crystal Palace:  Relocation, Water Features, Later Years, Decline, Destruction By Fire, Activity Since The Fire, Future

Famous quotes containing the words crystal and/or palace:

    A crystal of breath,
    your irreversible
    witness.
    Paul Celan [Paul Antschel] (1920–1970)

    Good places for aphorisms: in fortune cookies, on bumper stickers, and on banners flying over the Palace of Free Advice.
    Mason Cooley (b. 1927)