The Crystal Palace. 1st Photographs. 1851. Glass & Steel. Burnt to The Ground.

The Crystal Palace was the largest glass building ever constructed upon completion, but furthermore, after the six month long World’s Fair in London, the Crystal Palace was supposedly moved, piece by piece, and rebuilt in Sydenham from 1852 through 1854.

The true nature of the original Crystal Palace is still up for debate, as only a handful of photographs survive of the structure. We will look through these images today, attributed mostly to Philip Henry Delemotte, who was commissioned to photograph the process. Let’s see what we can deduce from these images.

THE NARRATIVE

The Crystal Palace was a cast iron and plate glass structure, originally built in Hyde Park, London, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. The exhibition took place from 1 May to 15 October 1851, and more than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in its 990,000-square-foot exhibition space to display examples of technology developed in the Industrial Revolution. Designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, the Great Exhibition building was 1,851 feet long, with an interior height of 128 feet, and was three times the size of St Paul's Cathedral.

The 60,000 panes of glass were manufactured by the Chance Brothers. The 990,000-square-foot building with its 128-foot-high ceiling was completed in thirty-nine weeks [9.5 months]. The Crystal Palace boasted the greatest area of glass ever seen in a building. It astonished visitors with its clear walls and ceilings that did not require interior lights.

After the exhibition, the Palace was relocated to an open area of South London known as Penge Place. It was rebuilt at the top of Penge Peak next to Sydenham Hill, an affluent suburb of large villas. It stood there from June 1854 until its destruction by fire in November 1936. The nearby residential area was renamed Crystal Palace after the landmark.

Constructed: 1851 in approximately 9.5 months
Relocated: 1854, disassembled and moved to South London, reassembled
Destroyed: November, 1936. Fire. Burnt all the steel and glass to the ground.

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