P. H. Delamotte Photograph of the Interior of the Crystal Palace Essay

P. H. Delamotte Photograph of the Interior of the Crystal Palace After a successful year of housing the Great Exposition, the Crystal Palace by Joseph Paxton was disassembled and moved to Sydenham, where it stood for the next 85 years (Hobhouse, 32). The Palace, built for the 1851 World's Fair in London, was an architectural and engineering wonder modeled after the bridge and train shed construction of the mid-nineteenth century. The structure had been designed to be quickly assembled out of prefabricated members and easily rebuilt elsewhere. Its light construction was made possible to use of thin cast iron prefabricated elements combined with wood and a glazed outer shell. The Crystal Palace housed the most spectacular collection of artistic and industrial wonders ever assembled in one place thus far. Visitors came from all over the world to see this display of power at the "Exhibition of the Works of All Nations" which was organized by Prince Albert and Henry Cole (Beaver, 12). The success of the Crystal Palace that cost "a penny per cubic foot" (Hobhouse, 39) brought Joseph Paxton much praise as well as a knighthood. The structure at Hyde Park was designed as a temporary building, able to be constructed and disassembled easily. During the Great Exposition the Crystal Palace housed the works of craftsmen, engineers and artists. The most popular of these exhibits was a crystal fountain made especially for the exhibition (Beaver, 47). The full 33,000,000 cubic feet of Crystal Palace was filled with displays and people crowding the aisles examining these wonders (Hobhouse, 39). When the Fair closed the fate of the Crystal Palace was a topic of extreme importance. Its popularity was obvious and Paxton suggested transforming... ...reat Britain. London: The Arts Council, 1965. Beaver, Patrick. The Crystal Palace, 1851-1936: a portrait of Victorian enterprise. London, Hugh Evelyn Ltd., 1970. Briggs, Asa. Iron Bridge to Crystal Palace: impact and images of the Industrial Revolution. London: Thames and Hudson in collaboration with the Ironbridge Gorge Museum Trust, c1979. Hitchcock, Henry Russell. The Crystal Palace: the structure, its antecedents and its immediate progeny: and exhibition. Northampton, Mass.: Smith College Museum of Art, 1952. Hobhouse, Christopher. 1851 and the Crystal Palace; being an account of the Great Exhibition and its contents; of Sir Joseph Paxton; and the erection, the subsequent history and the destruction of his masterpiece. London, Murray, 1950. Newhall, Beaumont. The History of Photography: from 1839 to the present. New York: Museum of Modern Art. 1982.