The Crystal Palace, a vast demountable building designed by
Joseph Paxton for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park, London, was in many
ways crucial in the development of architecture: it was the pinnacle of
innovative metal structure, it revealed the exciting potential of efficient
prefabrication, and it was an early demonstration of the modern doctrine that
beauty can exist in the clear expression of materials and function. Altogether,
it was one of the most noteworthy buildings of the nineteenth century
The idea for a Great Exhibition came from the Society for the Encouragement
of Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce, and was given impetus by Henry Cole, then
an assistant keeper in the Public Records Office. His wide interests extended to
the publication of
The Journal of Design that encouraged artists to
design for industrialized mass production and urged manufacturers to employ
them. That, he believed, would raise the quality of everyday articles. Cole was
elected to the society’s council in 1846, and the following year, with others,
he successfully solicited Queen Victoria’s consort, Prince Albert of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, to accept the role of its president. Under Royal Charter, and
spurred by the success of French industrial expositions since 1844, the society
held Exhibitions of Art Manufactures from 1847 through 1849.
After visiting the exclusively French exhibition in Paris in 1849, Cole
realized that an international show would inform British industry of progress
(and commercial competition) elsewhere in the world. Prince Albert, convinced
that “that great end to which all history points—the realization of the unity of
mankind” was imminent, caught the vision. The Royal Commission for the
Exhibition of 1851 was established to expedite a self-financing “large
[exhibition] embracing foreign productions.” It was envisioned as “a new
starting-point from which all nations will be able to direct their further
exertions,” but it was at the same time an expression of British nationalism.
Britain had led the world into the Industrial Revolution, and her outlook was
smug, to say the least. The Great Exhibition would provide a vehicle to flaunt
her industrial, military, and economic superiority and justify her
colonialism.
The show was to have a display area of 700,000 square feet (66,000 square
meters), much bigger than anything the French had managed. That was too large
even for the intended venue in the courtyard of Somerset House, so it was
decided to locate it in Hyde Park. An open competition for the design of a
building for the “Great Exhibition of the Works of All Nations” attracted 245
entries from 233 architects, including 38 from abroad. The Commissioners’
Building Committee liked none of them; besides, it was unlikely that any could
have been completed on
time. Having prepared its own plan for a large dome standing on
a brick drum, the committee called for bids. The result was alarming: building
materials alone would have devoured at least half of the available funds of
£230,000. Anyway, the design was generally considered ugly, especially by the
architects whose proposals bad been rejected.
Fox and Henderson and Company, a firm of contractors, engineers, and
ironmasters, tendered a price for an alternative, based on a design by the
gardener Joseph Paxton. In 1826 Paxton had been appointed head landscape
gardener at Chatsworth, the Derbyshire estate of the sixth Duke of Devonshire.
He built large conservatories there, including one in 1886–1840 for the giant
water lily,
Victoria regia. Paxton claimed that his design for the Great
Exhibition building was inspired by the structure of that lily, whose cross ribs
strengthened the main radial ribs.
Learning that the invited architects had been turned down, Paxton had
sketched out his proposal on a sheet of blotting paper—romantic tradition says
it was during a train journey—and through a lucky meeting with a mutual friend
he was able to show it to Cole. The idea was simple: a modular structure of a
single cross section, built from prefabricated metal components, could be
repeated ad infinitum to produce a building of any size. Paxton promised Cole
that he would have detailed designs ready within a fortnight. In fact, they were
completed in nine days and passed to Fox and Henderson on 22 June 1850. By then,
the provision of a building was becoming urgent. Paxton’s proposal had the
desirable advantage of rapid construction; moreover, unlike the other schemes,
it could later be demounted to leave Hyde Park relatively undisturbed. The
commission accepted it; the only modification asked for was a vaulted transept
so the building could contain without damage the large elm trees on the
site.
The Crystal Palace, as it was soon dubbed, was a single space, 1,851 feet
long and 456 wide (554 by 136 meters), rising by 20-foot (6-meter) increments
across flanking tiered galleries to a 66-foot-high (20-meter) central nave. It
was intersected in the middle by a 108-foot-high (32-meter) vaulted transept.
The building covered 19 acres (7.6 hectares) of Hyde Park. A filigree of 330
slender, cast-iron columns and arcades supported its clear glass walls and roofs
and the wrought-iron beams that carried the galleries, alternately 24 feet (7.2
meters) and 48 feet wide.
Due largely to Paxton’s consummate organizational skills, Fox and Henderson
accomplished its construction between September 1850 and January 1851. The
Birmingham glassmaking firm of Chance Brothers supplied almost 294,000 panes,
which were fixed in a specially designed roof-glazing system based on economical
49-inch-wide (1.25-meter) sheets that determined the module for the entire
design. Building work oil-site consisted mostly of assembling the 3,920 tons
(3,556 tonnes) of cast-iron components that came from ninety different foundries
throughout Britain, often cast less than a day before they were fixed. The
accuracy obtained through prefabrication and the mechanical fixing dramatically
reduced the proportion of nonproductive labor common to traditional construction
methods. Cast-iron columns were strength-tested, and on-site milling and machine
painting included miles of timber-glazing bars. The building was decorated in
red, green, and blue, and the columns were brightened with yellow stripes. The
Crystal Palace established internationally a style and a standard for exhibition
pavilions, next at Cork (1852), then at Dublin and New York (both in 1853), and
Munich (1854).
The Great Exhibition opened on 1 May 1851, with more than 13,000 exhibits
from around the world. By the time it closed six months later, over 6.2 million
people had visited it. Despite popular insistence that the building should
remain, it was scheduled for dismantling. A consortium bought it and it was,
under Paxton’s supervision, reerected in a modified form in a park designed by
him at Sydenham Hill, southeast London. Reopened by Queen Victoria in June 1854,
the Crystal Palace became a national center for exhibits of industry, art,
architecture, and natural history, all held under the auspices of the Crystal
Palace Company. Sporting events took place in the park from about 1857 and for
twenty years after 1895 it became the venue for Football Association Cup finals.
Motor racing followed in 1936.
park now survives, and even that is under threat. The Crystal
Palace Partnership, with representatives of five London boroughs and
private-sector groups, is undertaking a £150 million regeneration scheme for
Crystal Palace Park that includes its “restoration,” a concert platform,
modernization of the National Sports Centre, and a so-called new Crystal Palace
on the surviving 12-acre (4.8-hectare) terrace. The latter, an insensitive
proposal for a utilitarian building housing a twenty-screen cinema multiplex
with restaurants, bars, and rooftop parking for a thousand cars, provoked local
residents to launch the Crystal Palace Campaign in May 1997. A challenge to the
scheme is being mounted in the High Court on the grounds that the Crystal Palace
Act of 1990 provides that any building on the site should be “in the style and
spirit of the former Crystal Palace.”
Further reading
Bird, Anthony. 1976. Paxton’s Palace. London:
Cassell.
Elliot, Cecil D. 1992. Technics and Architecture: The
Development of Materials and Systems for Buildings. Cambridge, MA: MIT
Press.
The Great Exhibition: London’s Crystal Palace
Exposition of 1851. 1995. New York: Gramercy
In November of that year, the Crystal Palace was destroyed by fire. Only one
terrace of the original
.