Crystal Palace: huge success, tragic end.

The giant 1,851’ long and 128’ high construction, made from British mat­erials, took just nine months to build and cost £150,000 (£15m today). Completed on time, the Great Exhibition was offic­ially opened by Queen Vict­or­ia in May 1851. On the first day there were traffic jams of horse-drawn cabs and car­riages stretching back to the Strand - 20,000 paid to enter the Crystal Palace on the first day alone. And in the six months, 6 million visitors arrived, a third of the pop­ul­­­ation of Britain. Until Oct 1851, it was the first in a series of World Fairs, exhibitions of culture and industry around the world.

Architects like Owen Jones (1809-74) designed a series of histor­ical fine-art courts, each court illustrating a particular period in the history of art. Augustus Pugin (1812-52), who didn’t approve of modernity, designed the original Mediaeval Court, and courts illus­trating Egyptian, Roman, Renais­s­ance, Chinese and Grecian art. Statuary around the fountain basins, urns, tazzas and vases were added, along with 12,000 jets, water temples and cascades.

Crystal Palace Sydenham,

Surrounded by parks, terraces, lakes and fountains

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There were 100,000 exhibits. Among the exhibits the public could see inside the Crystal Palace were locomotives and cameras, excit­ing inventions in 1851 that later generations took for granted.

In Oct 1851, the Great Exhibition closed, having made a profit of £186,000. They knew Hyde Park had to be returned to its original state but the building had become so popular that Paxton wanted to move it, for protection. Paxton secured a reprieve from Parliament to leave the building intact until May 1852. However an ultra-conservative Colonel MP for Lin­coln, who disliked the Great Exhib­ition, persuaded Parl­iament to immediate­ly dismantle the Palace.

Crystal Palace Mark II opened in 1854. The Crystal Palace Co. directors raised and contributed £500,000 to buy and re-erect the building in Aug 1852, in Syden­ham Hill in SE London. During a time of high unem­ployment, the project provided jobs for 7,000 workmen. Sadly in Aug 1853, tons of scaffolding support­ing the centre transept collapsed and twelve labourers died.

The Sydenham site covered 389 acres, and consisted of woodland and the grounds of a mansion owned by a railway entrepreneur. 17 acres were sold to the Brighton Railway Company to construct the new Crystal Palace Railway Station which was, in turn, connected to the Crystal Palace by a 720ft glass colonnade.

The new building had five storeys instead of the original three and, because of the additional length, two extra transepts were added to give balance. Sydenham Pal­ace opened to the public in 1854. c100,000 people went to the opening, along with 200 instrum­ents and 500 voices. The whole comp­lex averaged 2 million vis­itors a year, but the orig­inal £500,000 budget was grossly inad­equate. Crystal Pal­ace Mark II never shook off its debt.

Fire struck in 1866 and the Courts, Indian & Naval Galleries, and the zoo were destroyed in the north transept. Who or what caused the fire? How did so much glass catch fire?

Crystal Palace National Sports Centre opened in 1895. Since then, Crystal Palace came to denote the area where the building HAD stood! It also named the sports stadium that was built on its grounds. The FA Cup Final was played there in most years from 1895-1914. A new football team called Crystal Palace was formed to play there in 1905, Crystal Palace Park bec­om­ing the Football Club’s home from 1906.

The Palace's popularity eventually faded. The directors had worked for 45+ years, but more modern facilities and entert­ain­ments had become available elsewhere. The financial problems of the Palace peaked in 1911, the year of George V's Coronation and the year of the biggest Palace show ever: The Festival of Empire. The British Emp­ire was at its peak, reflected in the opening con­cert where Elg­ar’s Land of Hope and Glory was sung by a choir of 4,500. Ex­hibits told the history of ALL the British Empire’s count­ries!

Alas the revenue raised couldn’t keep the Palace solvent, so its im­minent sale by auction was announced. Some Save the Palace Schemes were mobilised and the Earl of Plymouth raised the money to pre­vent it being sold to developers. London’s Lord Mayor set up a fund to repay him, and in 1913 the Palace was nationalised.

In the inter-war era, Crystal Palace played a key part in the dev­elopment of British television. In 1933 John Logie Baird set up a fully-equipped television broadcast­ing station, using the south tower of the Palace for his test transmissions. 

Osler's Crystal Fountain at Crystal Palace Sydenham

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Then in Nov 1936, disaster struck again. The general man­ag­er of the Palace, Sir Henry Buckland, was walk­ing and saw a small red glow inside the Palace. He ran inside and found two night-watchmen trying to put out a small fire. The fire brigade arrived but soon hundreds more firemen were needed. c100,000 people went to Sydenham Hill to witness the dest­ruction, the site that had contained the greatest amount of glass ever seen in a building. Only Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s two water towers re­m­ained, and were later demol­ish­ed. Architects lament­ed the loss of great C19th architect­ure.