The London World Exposition 1851
The First World Exhibition
Introduction
The 1851 World Exposition in
London was the venue for, among many other things, probably the
world's most important flute exhibition to
date. Before we go on to look at the flutes, we should get a
feeling for the exhibition at large. Adrian Duncan has assembled
this overview ....
The
Concept
The
great Parisian Industrial Exhibitions, which had been significantly
strengthening the French economy since the Great Revolution, inspired the
British Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and
Commerce (hereinafter referred to as The Royal Society) to stage similar
exhibitions in Britain from the 1840s onward. However, these exhibitions
were purely national in scope and thus failed to present a comprehensive
picture of commercial and artistic development worldwide. Nor did they
stimulate further improvements by offering the opportunity for a direct
side-by-side comparison of the products of the International community at
large.
On
29 June 1849, a Commission led by the influential civil servant Henry Cole
proposed to Queen Victoria’s beloved Consort, Prince Albert, who served as
Chairman of the Royal Society, that these industrial exhibitions should be
internationalized. At first, Albert hesitated. But when the Ministry of
Trade announced its willingness to participate, Albert and Cole swiftly
went to work. They decided that such an exhibition would have to take
place in a solid and attractive building in a suitably impressive setting,
and went searching for an exhibition site. They also convened various
committees to consider matters regarding financing, attracting foreign
participants, and the creation of an awards system. With the Queen’s
consent, Hyde Park was to be used as the site of the first truly
International exhibition.
Funding remained a private responsibility of the Royal Society, since the
government wanted to employ a Royal Commission, which would have given an
official air to the project, only after the financial
foundations had been secured. Time did not allow for this. However,
thanks to the industrialization of the country, which had increased
considerably in recent decades, there was now enough capital available
from amongst the broader social strata in Britain to provide for the
construction of the exhibition building without Government involvement.
This capital could be attracted through subscriptions. The proposed great
industrial Exhibition offered the bourgeoisie the opportunity to display
their contribution to the nation’s wealth and to gain social recognition.
In
January of 1850, Queen Victoria convened a 24-strong Royal Commission
which was to oversee the planning and implementation of the Exhibition.
This Commission was an illustrious assembly of the country’s leading
scientists, engineers, civil servants and industrialists. Naturally,
Prince Albert became its chairman. Numerous conferences and trips by the
members of the Royal Commission secured the support of large segments of
society, which organized into 330 local committees for the promotion and
supply of the exhibition. For the working classes, too, promotion schemes
were established, which were intended to inform the workers about the
plans and allow them to travel to London to participate. Declarations of
participation were received from the most important foreign nations. Even
Napoleon III, who had been planning a similar International exhibition
project for Paris, pledged France’s participation.
The Building of the Crystal
Palace
As
late as June 1850, the Commission began to focus primarily on the
Exhibition building itself. The proposed site was a 26 acre rectangular
piece of land in Hyde Park. 500 ft wide by 2300 ft long. This site was
picked for ease of access, drainage, access to gas and water, convenient
location and the beauty of its surroundings. Now a suitable building had
to be designed, constructed and made ready for the Exhibition in the
unbelievably short time of some 10 months – no time at all for such a
massive undertaking.
Wishing to demonstrate that anything France could do, England could do
bigger and better, the Commissioners decided from the outset on an
Exhibition area far bigger than anything the French had produced to date.
A budget of £230,000 had been established by the Commissioners to meet
the costs of the Exhibition, and designs for the building had been
solicited, both from within Britain and internationally. The response was
massive - some 245 designs were submitted, 128 of which came from London,
51 from Provincial towns and 38 from foreign countries (27 from France).
The
Commissioners considered these drafts and rejected them all! One of the
rejected designs came from the eminent British engineer Isambard Kingdom
Brunel, and consisted of a cast-iron dome, but this was ridiculed and
considered hideous. The Commission then developed their own design and
entertained bids.
The
design put forward by the commission itself included an oblong three-naved
hall, which was to be crowned by a large dome of brick, steel and iron
plates. This was attacked heavily both by Parliament and the press. Never
could this monstrosity have been built within a year! Not only that, but
it soon became apparent that the costs associated with this design would
far exceed the available money. In Parliament, resistance against the
whole project grew amongst the conservatives, since funding had now become
insecure and the implementation of the design would threaten large stocks
of ancient and highly-valued trees in Hyde Park. The “Times”, too,
joined the opponents, seeing British technological progress as being
potentially endangered by virtually inviting foreigners to come and
overtly conduct “industrial espionage”, overlooking the obvious rejoinder
that the British would have the same opportunity to examine the products
of all the rest!
Into this seemingly irresolvable situation stepped the eminent landscape
architect Joseph Paxton, who quietly introduced his own draft at the
beginning of July. He had drawn up his original design on blotting paper
and had a complete set of plans prepared in nine days.
Paxton was primarily a horticulturist who had been building glass houses
for 20 years. His idea for the Exhibition building was based on a
conservatory that he had built for the 6th Duke of Devonshire. He had also
designed large greenhouses for the Duke at Chatsworth. His design stood
out from all the other drafts by its lightness, its relatively lower cost,
and the fact that its “repeating structure” design basis would allow
extensive pre-fabrication and would also offer the possibility of both
erecting and tearing down the building quickly. Paxton had been able to
apply his experience gained in building large conservatories directly to
the new task, and was working with some of the most experienced railway
engineers of the time, who had experience in designing large railway
station buildings. The contractors Fox and Henderson were also involved in
developing Paxton’s design into something that could be erected within the
available time-frame and within the available budget.
Because of these factors, Paxton’s daring design appeared in the nature of
a life-line to save a rapidly foundering project. On July 6, 1850, the
Illustrated London News published an engraving of the planned structure,
which found immediate favor both with the public and the politicians.
The House of Commons voted for the Exhibition by a large majority, on
the basis of its apparent feasibility if Paxton’s design were adopted.
Because of the huge and immediate public and political support for
Paxton’s idea, the Royal Commission was forced to give its consent.
Perhaps to re-assert their somewhat diminished authority, the Commission
added a domed roof to Paxton’s plan to accommodate some larger trees in
the park which were to remain intact within the building. This proved to
be a significant enhancement to the design. From that point on, there
were no more obstacles or objections to the Exhibition proceeding, and the
fabled Crystal Palace was born.
The
Crystal Palace’s architecture represented an adaptation of the great
British conservatories; it was characterized by its high halls, flooded
with light, in which even the old stock of living trees found room, and
large machines in full operation could be displayed.
Against all Victorian customs, Joseph Paxton had largely disdained
decorative elements in his design. The exhibition building was meant for a
determinate function, limited in time, and was built only to this end.
Different colors alone emphasized the different building elements: the
interior was painted in white, red, blue and yellow, whilst the exterior
was rendered in a light blue. The country’s industrial capabilities, for
example in rail construction and glass fabrication, were drawn upon to the
full: the roof was covered with 124 by 25 centimetre (50 by 10 inches)
glass plates, for which a third of the whole British yearly glass
production was required. These glass plates not only determined the grid
for the roof, but for the whole building. Thus only four types of support
beam, which were between seven and 22 metres long, had to be developed and
cast. The pillars, on the other hand, could be screwed together and also
served as rain pipes. The pillars and beams were produced industrially,
tested on site for their solidity by a hydraulic press, and then assembled
with cranes and pulleys. With this construction grid, which was
indefinitely enlargeable, a structure developed that was three times as
long as St. Paul’s Cathedral.
Paxton had designed a three-tiered building dominated by a 20 metre high
and 563 metre long main nave. On its sides were 14 metre high side naves.
Into the sides of the main nave were built galleries, thus increasing the
exhibition area. This main nave was divided in the middle by a barrel
roofed cross nave. This barrel roof was added by the Commissioners as a
concession to nature, because only by including it could three large old
elm trees be preserved. As things turned out, this concession added
considerably to the building’s popularity. Since only the sidewalls of the
side naves were made of wood, the rest of the building was made entirely
of cast iron and glass, through which daylight entered unfiltered.
Particularly in the 42 metre high cross nave, the whole construction
seemed to dissolve into a fine web of iron and daylight.
The
building included 2300 cast-iron girders; 358 wrought-iron roof support
trusses; 202 miles (325 kilometers) of sash bars; 900,000 square feet of
glass weighing more than 406 tons; 3230 hollow cast-iron columns which
supported the structure and also served as a means to carry off rainwater
from the 34 miles (54.7 kilometers) of guttering, and 600,000 feet of
wooden planking to walk on. Hawks were kept inside the Palace to control
the sparrow population. And for the first time, flush toilets were
incorporated into a building intended for public use.
Paxton had ignored all the then-current conventional conceptions of
architecture – distinct walls determining proportions, windows allowing a
clearly framed view of the outside, a solid protective roof. The
contemporaries found it difficult to even describe this entirely new
impression of space in the Crystal Palace. But it was less the “magical
poetic construct of air”, as a critic praised it twenty years later, than
the industrial production of the building components and the engineered
erection of the structure, which were most influential in terms of the
architecture of the second half of the 19th century.
On
26 July, the London builders and contractors Fox & Henderson were assigned
the contract for construction. New methods of construction, extensive
use of prefabricated components and the ready availability of cast-iron
and glass made the concept easily realizable within the time available.
In fact, the project represented a staggering and highly innovative
technological tour de force, of the kind in which the engineers and
architects of Victorian-era Britain specialized. The building was
conceived in June 1850, the concrete foundations were begun in August of
1850, the first iron column was fixed into place on September 26th, 1850
and the completed structure stood finished in January 1851 – an elapsed
time from initial conception to final realization of only seven months!
It is doubtful if anything remotely similar could be accomplished today.
Nothing could have been more effective in stamping the label of British
technological superiority upon the Exhibition right from the outset. The
final cost of 193,168 pounds, added to Paxton’s fee of 5000 pounds, meant
that the project came in well within the Commissioners’ budget.
The
enormous deadline pressure quite understandably led to some construction
flaws. Above all, the glass roof proved to be far from waterproof, because
the plates had not always been screwed on properly or had been damaged
during construction. In the short run, the meeting of the deadline was
also threatened by a builders’ strike. In the middle of winter, the
roofers sat for eighteen hours a day in specially constructed trolleys,
with which 18,000 glass plates a week could be affixed to a carrier system
developed by Paxton. For this dangerous task, the builders demanded a
pay-raise from four to five shillings a day. Fox & Henderson could not
afford a bad press in this situation and thus reacted swiftly and
efficiently: the spokesmen for the builders were sacked, others were
threatened with the same fate, but at the same time they were offered the
option to continue work under the old conditions. At least job security
was higher than on other building sites. The “Illustrated London News”’
reported only three serious accidents during construction.
Stability and safety concerns were raised by the Astronomer Royal,
Professor Airey and Richard Turner. Their questions involved not the
weight of the building but potential resonance arising from crowds moving
through the structure. A test construction was organized to check the
resonance theories, and the experiment proved the safety of the
structure. Fears immediately diminished, to be replaced by a sense of
eager anticipation.
Douglas Jerrold, editor of “Punch” magazine, is credited with
introducing the building as "The Crystal Palace", which was intended as a
derogatory remark. However, Jerrold’s intended sneering backfired - the
name stuck and became synonymous in a highly positive sense with the
spectacularly daring architectural and engineering design concepts which
the building displayed.
While the building was being discussed and construction getting underway,
the work of collecting applications to exhibit at the event had also been
ongoing. The deadline for applications was October 31, 1850. As of that
date, total requests for space exceeded 417,000 square feet, almost
double the amount originally appropriated. The Exhibition layout was
amended accordingly.
In
the spring months of 1851 the elaborate installations and decorations for
the exhibits were completed, which took away a lot of the Crystal Palace’s
lightness. Furthermore, more than one million exhibits, many of them
traveling from overseas, had to be collected and placed. Some idea of the
relative scale of the event may be gathered from the fact that France
alone had 65,000 sq ft. of exhibit space, which was more than the
total amount of area encompassing the 1844 and 1849 French
National Exhibitions!! For the purpose of the Exhibition, the building
was to be treated as a "bonded warehouse" to avoid import duties. This
explained why exhibitors were not free to sell their wares on the
Exhibition premises (although they could of course do so outside the
Exhibition site once import duty had been paid).
The Exhibition Opens
The
London press had raised expectations very high as opening day approached.
The “Times” newspaper reported that it would take over 200 hours to
visit every exhibit. The whole city was feverishly looking forward to the
opening of the gates. Numerous handbooks and guides were offered by
official distributors and street vendors. Even a trade in souvenirs with
depictions of the Crystal Palace on all sorts of objects had been
established.
At
the opening on 1 May 1851, the placement of exhibits was far from
completed. But the festively decorated cross nave with its much admired
crystal well in the centre offered an exalted backdrop for the
festivities, which were staged on schedule with full Victorian pomp and
pageantry. 25,000 visitors filled the Crystal Palace’s naves to be present
at the opening ceremonies. Only season ticket holders were admitted to the
actual Exhibition on opening day, and this may explain the fact that 0n
April 29th alone, 40,000 pounds worth of season tickets were
sold.
The
exclusivity of Opening Day did not prevent an immense crowd of some
300,000 people (according to some reports) from filling the city streets
and awaiting the arrival of the Queen and her husband. At twelve o’clock
sharp, they entered the exhibition site, accompanied by the thunder of
cannons, fanfares and the cheers of the crowd. After a prayer by the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the performance of Handel’s “Hallelujah
Chorus” by the collective London choirs accompanied by the great organ,
Prince Albert stepped forward and, as chairman of the Royal Commission,
delivered the opening speech. He once again described the aim of the
Exhibition as “the fertile promotion of all branches of human diligence
and the strengthening of the bonds of peace amongst all the nations of the
earth.” This was followed by a brief tour of the Exhibition building. In a
festive progression, the Royal Commission together with Joseph Paxton and
the contractors Fox and Henderson in the lead, the diplomats and foreign
dignitaries, and finally the Queen followed by her courtiers, paraded
through the building. Having returned to her throne, Queen Victoria, again
accompanied by fanfares and rounds of salutes, declared the “Great
Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations” open.
The
Queen herself, as can be gathered from her diary, was thoroughly
impressed. The entry in her diary for the Opening Day of the Exhibition
reads as follows:
“This
day is one of the greatest and most glorious in our lives and, to my joy
and pride, will forever be associated with the name of my beloved Albert!
It is a day that has filled my heart with gratitude. […] The view through
the iron gates onto the cross nave, the billowing palm trees, flowers,
statues, the myriad of people occupying all the galleries and chairs, with
all the fanfares as we entered: all of this gave us a feeling that I will
never forget. I was very moved. […] As we stepped into the centre where
the stairs and throne (on which I did not sit) had been erected – directly
before us the wonderful crystal well – such a magical sight awaited us –
so overwhelming, glorious, touching. One felt – like so many others with
whom I have spoken since – inspired with devotion, more than in any mass I
have ever heard. The mighty cheers, the happiness that shone from every
face, the building’s enormous size, the mixture of palm trees, flowers,
trees, statues, wells, the organ (with 200 stops and 600 voices – it
sounded like nothing before) and my beloved husband, the originator of
this “peaceful festival”, which unites the diligence of all the nations of
the earth – all of this was indeed moving, and it has been and it is a day
that ought to last forever. God bless my Albert, God bless my beloved
country that has distinguished herself so nobly today. One feels so
grateful to the great God who seemed to imbue and bless everything and
everyone!”
The
Queen, along with her children, subsequently visited every exhibitor’s
booth. Incidents of this nature make it easy to understand the affection
in which the British public, and indeed many foreign visitors, held the
Queen.
The Exhibition
Proceeds
In
terms of its organization and its accommodations, the first World
Exhibition set standards that would be hard to surpass. The immediate
impact upon the visitor was undoubtedly made by the Crystal Palace itself,
which for all of the attempts by “Punch” ‘to belittle it swiftly
captured the imagination of visitors from around the world. In his “Cultural
Historical sketches from the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of
all Nations (1851)”, Lothar Bucher commented as follows:
“Paxton’s
Crystal Palace: The building’s beauty, which has so often been discussed
and argued over, in which we move around, is in my opinion based on the
impossibility of achieving the singular aim with the given materials of
iron and glass any better than Paxton has done. […] We see a fine network
of symmetrical lines, but without a clue as to make a judgment about their
distance from the eye, or the real size of its meshes. The sidewalls are
too distant to be caught in one glance, and instead of finding an opposite
wall, the eye moves upward along an infinite perspective, the end of which
blurs into a blue haze. We do not know whether the building is suspended
100 or 1,000 feet above us, whether the roof is flat or made up of a
number of small parallel roofs; because the casting of shadows, which
usually helps the soul to understand the visual nerve’s impression, is
entirely lacking. As we let our gaze wander down again, it meets the
perforated carrier beams painted blue, initially in wide gaps, then moving
ever closer, then overlapping, then pierced by a gleaming beam of light,
finally dissolving into a distant background, in which everything
corporeal, even the line, disappears and only colour remains. Only the
side walls give us some orientation as, out of the mass of tapestries,
tissues, animal furs, mirrors and a thousand other draperies, we select a
single free pillar – so slim that it seems it were not there in order to
support, but only in order to satisfy the eye’s needs for a support. The
light beam, which breaks the perspective line of support beams, is the
cross nave. It is due to the sober economy of language that I call the
sight of it incomparable, fairylike. It is a piece of summer night dream
in the mid-day sun.”
In
this fabulous setting, a total of 13, 937 exhibitors displayed over one
million exhibits valued at over 2 million pounds. This figure did not
include the fabled Koh-i-Noor Diamond, which was considered priceless and
today forms part of the British crown jewels. The combined exhibits
required a series of display tables which in the end totaled some 8 miles
(13 km) in length!
Of
the 13,937 exhibitors, 6,861 were from England, 520 from the 15
participating British colonies and the remaining 6556 from the 25 other
countries taking part. As might be expected from the above figures, Great
Britain and her colonies required about half of the available space for
her 6,900 exhibitors. In the eastern parts of the Crystal Palace,
companies from a total of 94 states, colonies and dependent principalities
and duchies displayed their exhibits. Never before had there been a larger
gathering of the world’s nations. A sub-division of the Royal Commission
had developed a novel classification system for the presentation of
industrial products and arts and crafts in the same areas This grid had to
be combined with the division of the exhibition site according to
countries – a difficult task. It was however made easier by the building’s
clear partition, with its main length-wise axis, which was entirely
reserved for large sculptures, and the grid-like floor plan, which could
easily be divided into approximately 1,500 square foot exhibition units.
In the cross nave, palm trees and other exotic plants were placed in
between large wells, thus providing coolness and shade in the heat of the
summer months.
Stalls
offering refreshments and restaurants could also be found here. Further
catering facilities were accommodated at either end of the main nave. Some
idea of the value of the catering rights may be gathered from the fact
that J. Schweppe & Co. later reported having used half a ton of tea and
over six tons of coffee to service the two refreshment courts in which
they had involvement as suppliers! An interesting commentary on the
relative popularity of tea and coffee in Britain at the time!
Although the first World Exhibition was short on significant new
inventions, the numerous improvements of existing tools and machines
dispersed any doubts regarding the event’s usefulness. Only here could one
find all the relevant information on new steam engines or the advances in
the field of telegraphy. A whole side nave was dedicated to machines in
motion in order to give the interested citizen a safe insight into
production processes. Two large steam boilers, which were of course
integrated into the presentation, supplied the energy with which all the
machines were centrally powered. Above all, an overwhelming abundance of
every available product of international productive diligence – from
locomotives to the smallest precision clock – was displayed. From the
colonies came primarily raw materials, which were skillfully arranged to
symbolically represent the contribution of the under-developed countries
to the world cycle of capitalism. The public were also impressed by exotic
arts and crafts and stuffed wild animals. Arts and crafts were given their
own section according to the classification system. In these areas as well
as in the production of luxury goods, the French exhibitors stood out
particularly.
The Royal Commission put a specific emphasis on the education of the
working classes. The social unrest of the European revolutions of 1848/49
was still fresh in people’s memories, and education and empowerment of the
masses were seen as vital elements in the avoidance of similar
disturbances in Britain. Guided tours and ticket concessions made visits
to the world exhibition easier for this class of visitor. Prince Albert
was concerned about the workers’ difficult housing situation then
prevailing in England and presented, next to the Crystal Palace, a model
house that he had personally developed as a separate exhibit. This was
remarkable for its well thought-through floor plan and novel building
materials. Of course, the prince was awarded a Great Medal of Achievement,
which he probably deserved.
The
exhibition was very well received by the London public and the numerous
out-of-town and foreign visitors. Every day, thousands of visitors
journeyed from all parts of the British Isles to the Exhibition using
bargain rail tickets. “Exhibition” railway excursions from York to London
would run from 5 to 15 shillings for a round trip. In addition, many
visitors came to the event from points all around the globe. This was
truly an International event.
Variable cover charges channeled the streams of visitors, such that one
could chose between paying a large fee and being able to visit the
exhibits relatively unhindered by a large crowd, or going on a “shilling
day” and having to deal with the masses of visitors. The price of
admission was reduced as the Exhibition neared its conclusion, and this
explains why the best day’s attendance at the event came on October 7,
1851, when 109,915 people visited.
The
visitors who flocked to the exhibition from all over the world secured for
the Royal Exhibition Commission a sizeable profit, with which the
pre-eminence of domestic industry could be increased even further.
The Awards system
Awards
at the Exhibition were to be conferred by a number of international Juries
established for the different categories of exhibit, with a Council of
Juries having representatives from each individual Jury in overall charge
of the awards process. From the outset, the question arose – should
exhibits receive recognition for their demonstrated innovation,
their demonstrated workmanship, or both? And how were the
Jurors to judge the relative merits of an item displaying outstanding
workmanship against one displaying outstanding
originality? Unless some distinction were made, it would be very
difficult for the Juries to assign merit to the various exhibits.
It had
originally been intended that there would be three types of medals
awarded, all of bronze. These were to be awarded on the basis of
intrinsic merit rather than relative merit. However, the Juries found it
impossible not to imply some level of relative merit with the original
award system, and at their request the number of award categories was
accordingly reduced to two – the Council Medal and the Prize Medal. These
had quite distinct criteria, and it is vital for the reader to understand
these criteria quite clearly.
The
stated intention of the organizers was to recognize two
quite distinct areas of excellence with these two medals – innovation of
ideas and outstanding workmanship and production. It was the express
intent that the medals awards for these factors should be seen as
recognizing quite distinct elements of excellence and should not
be seen in any way as conferring any relative degree of merit.
The
Prize Medal was to be conferred by individual Juries upon exhibitors whose
offerings displayed “a certain standard of excellence in production or
workmanship”. An important point – there is no mention
here of design innovation. Recognition of that factor was reserved for
the Council Medal, which was only to be awarded by the
Council of Juries (at the recommendation of the specific Jury in question)
to those exhibitors whose offerings displayed “some important novelty
of invention or application” and was specifically not to
be awarded on the basis of “excellence of production or workmanship
alone, however eminent..…” In other words, the Prize Medal recognised
outstanding execution of ideas, whether original or not,
while the Council Medal recognised outstanding and original
innovation of ideas or their application. The two awards were
thus quite distinct and conveyed no relative merit whatsoever, greatly
easing the task of the Jurors. Some evidence of the relative implications
of these awards may be gathered from the fact that, while 2,918 Prize
Medals were awarded, only 170 exhibitors were judged to have earned the
Council Medal. Then as now, those capable of outstanding execution of
ideas in production terms far outnumbered their more innovative brethren!
The
Juries were also empowered to assign Honourable Mention status to
exhibitors whose work fell short of meeting the required standards for the
award of a medal but which were nonetheless judged to possess noteworthy
merit. These awards were generally published without further comment. The
Jury could also recommend cash awards to assist exhibitors in further
developing their products. Additional flexibility was provided to the
Jury through its assigned task of preparing a Juror’s Report on each
Subsection. In this report, the Jury was free to make any observations
that it cared to make about the exhibits which its members had reviewed.
Apart
from the relative numbers of medals awarded for innovation and execution,
the fact that the Jurors took their work seriously is further reinforced
by consideration of the fact that of the
13,937 exhibitors who took
part, only 3,088 (22%) received medals of any sort. Clearly, a medal
winner really had to stand out from among the majority of his fellow
exhibitors.
The
above system, while laudable in its intention, proved in the event to be
subject to abuse, particularly by those whose products received the Prize
Medal for workmanship as opposed to the Council Medal for innovation.
Doubtless for commercial reasons, there was a great temptation to assign
the credit for the award of the Prize Medal as a kind of “second prize” to
the design of one’s product rather than to what the Medal
was actually awarded for – the excellence of workmanship
displayed by the exhibit. A noteworthy offender in this regard who falls
within our sphere of interest was the British flute designer and
manufacturer Richard Carte, who consistently (and quite incorrectly)
claimed to have received a Prize Medal for the design of his 1851 Patent
flute. In fact, Carte’s flute had merely been the vehicle through which
the actual exhibitors, Messrs. Rudall & Rose, had demonstrated their
manufacturing skill and hence their right to recognition. It was
accordingly Rudall & Rose, not Carte, who had received the award for their
fine workmanship, not for Carte’s flute design. No doubt many other
individuals made similar unfounded claims.
The Exhibition Closes
The
first World Exhibition ended on 11 October, 1851 with the handing out of
awards to those exhibitors selected by the 314 jurors. Naturally, the
majority of awards went to Great Britain. France, with around 33 per cent
of the prizes in the Council Medal category, did well, too. The
exhibition’s message was quickly understood: Great Britain was leading in
industry and economy, and could serve as an example for other nations. For
trade, too, a clear signal was given. The times of protectionism and high
import taxes were over. The world-wide linking of economies had been
advanced considerably.
More than six million visitors had come to the Crystal Palace – roughly
one-fifth of the entire population of Great Britain at the time. This
figure was far higher than the organizers themselves had anticipated in
their wildest dreams. The Exhibition’s huge success made the Royal
Commission a handy profit of over 400,000 pounds. As set out in its
statute, this money was used for the promotion of industry and to buy land
in South Kensington, where Prince Albert had several museums established
in order to raise education levels. Profits from the Exhibition were used
to provide London with the Royal Albert Hall, the Science Museum, the
National History Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Some of
these, like the Victoria and Albert Museum, were endowed with selected
exhibits from the first World Exhibition.
The
architecture of the Crystal Palace had set a standard for subsequent World
Exhibition venues, inspiring two fairly direct imitations. The United
States’ first major Exposition (in 1862) saw the unveiling of the New
York Crystal Palace, and Australia's first major Exposition was held in
the Garden Palace in Sydney in 1879. It is certainly true that imitation
is the most sincere form of flattery! Nevertheless, the elegance and
eminence of the original structure have rarely been equaled. Joseph
Paxton might well have been proud of his achievement.
The Crystal Palace
moves on
It
had always been the intention of the organizers that the Exhibition
building should be dismantled following the conclusion of the event so
that Hyde Park could be returned to its previous condition. However, the
building had attracted so much favorable attention that its destruction
was widely seen as being highly undesirable and indeed as something akin
to an act of vandalism. A new commission was accordingly convened, this
time with Paxton as chairman, for the purpose of determining a more
positive future for the building than mere demolition.
True to his horticultural roots, Paxton wanted to turn the Crystal Palace
into a "'Winter Park and Garden under Glass". Accordingly, and
together with 8 other directors, he formed The Crystal Palace Company
under a Royal Charter. This group quickly raised over £500,000 to buy the
building and to acquire the necessary land to re-erect it on a new site.
The building was purchased for £70,000 (£3.5 million today) from Fox &
Henderson. The new site purchased by the Company consisted of a mansion
called Penge Place together with its 389 acres of associated land. The
location on South London’s Sydenham Hill was previously owned by Leo
Schuster, a friend of Paxton.
The
intended use of the building at its new locations was to serve as a museum
and tourist attraction for the general education and entertainment of the
public and also as a giant conservatory. The building underwent a major
check-up for the purpose of reconstruction. The original building had been
designed for a five-month event which basically took place during the
summer months. As a year-round long term facility, not only did it have
to be made weatherproof for the winter and also heated and ventilated, but
it also had to be made far more durable. It had probably been only a
matter of good luck that the structure had withstood the enormous rush of
the crowds during the World Exhibition. Some structural changes were
clearly required if the building was to withstand the rigors of long-term
use year-round.
Reconstruction at the new site began on August 5, 1852. Soon thereafter,
the Brighton Railway Company purchased a 17 acre site nearby and
constructed the Crystal Palace (Low Level) Railway Station. Connecting the
Railway Station to the Crystal Palace was a 720 foot glass walkway called
the Crystal Colonnade.
The
work of reconstruction did not always proceed smoothly. In August 1853, 12
construction workers died when tons of scaffolding supporting the center
transept collapsed. And in a somewhat ironic twist, Isambard Kingdom
Brunel (the eminent engineer whose original design had been rejected in
1850) had to step in to re-design and build the two 46 foot diameter, 284
foot tall brick water towers associated with the relocated structure after
Paxton's design had failed. And there were financial woes as well - the
Company used up their initial £500,000 before the building was half
finished and had to borrow to cover the shortfall. The final bill totaled
nearly £1,300,000 (£50.5 million today), and the Company was left deeply
in debt.
Nonetheless, on June 10th, 1854, the New Crystal Palace Park, including
both the building and the surrounding land, was opened by Queen Victoria.
The originally-planned opening day was to have been May 1, 1854 but the
various construction and financial problems, together with the
Royally-decreed covering of the private parts on the nude male statues
(!!) delayed the opening to June 10th.
The
new Crystal Palace was considerably larger than the original in Hyde Park.
The building was 2 stories taller (5 stories total) and north and south
transepts were added. Total floor area was 50% larger than the original.
The total area was 603,072 feet, and the building footprint measured 1608
feet by 384 feet wide.
A Visit to the
Relocated Crystal Palace
In
1862 the well-known French musical commentator, the Count Ad. de
Pontécoulant, spent twelve days in London visiting the 1862 World
Exhibition held that year at South Kensington. One of the highlights of
his visit was a side-trip to Sydenham to re-visit the fabled Crystal
Palace which he had first experienced in 1851 during his visit to the
Exhibition of that year. The good Count left us the following description
of his visit, which conveys very well the impressions created by a visit
to the Palace in its heyday.
“To go to London
without seeing Sydenham is undoubtedly to lose part of the interest of the
journey. I accompanied Mr. C ....... to the Crystal Palace. A visit to
Sydenham is not an excursion through the suburbs, it is a voyage through
the world and the centuries. Sydenham, its Crystal Palace, its summer and
winter gardens, its gathering of the most curious and most unimaginable
works of nature and art, where many dreams become palpable; where many
pages of your readings, many engravings of the most remarkable monuments,
take form and reality and appear in front of you, tangible, accessible.
You can believe yourself transported at one stroke to Pompeï or Khosabad,
to Thébes or to Granada, and before a host of other interesting locations
in the old and new world and, even more, the prehistoric world.
When the Exhibition of
1851 ended and the Crystal Palace, then standing in London in Hyde Park,
had become useless, the English did not have the fortitude to destroy this
building, so imposing and of such an extraordinary kind. And yet the
borrowed site on which it was located was required to be vacant once
more. A subscription of thirteen million francs was proposed, derived
from a hundred thousand donations, and in less than fifteen days these
hundred thousand donations, based on national self-esteem, note, and not
on financial interests, had been received.
Then they got on with
it. They brought the Crystal Palace to Sydenham; they placed it on an
eminence dominating a vast horizon; it was modified, they raised it, they
enlarged it by the addition of two transepts and side galleries; they gave
it a splendid and picturesque garden with water fountains, and finally
they sent specialists to the five parts of the world to draw, to measure,
to mould, to collect all that could form a basis for a museum worthy of
the building.
The building is 500
meters in length (over a quarter of a mile), and 400 meters in width; I
already told you the height. As it stands today, it cost more than forty
million francs.
Now choose the region
of the globe that you would like to visit. If you wish to cross the
threshold of the elegant residence of a middle-class man of the time of
Vespasian, note the hospitable threshold on which one reads the
inscription in mosaic: “Salve” (the Latin for “Greeting”), or this
warning: “Cave Canem” (Beware of the dog!). You will find there the
feeling of being in a home extremely different to ours, but which was
appropriate for a time when window glass was not in use, and with a
climate under which life went on as much as possible in the open air. In
the place of our fragile wallpapers, the walls were covered with
paintings, preserved rather well under the rain of ashes of Vesuvius, so
that one could restore them and copy them with a rigorous exactitude.
From the residence of
a private individual, do you wish to pass to a palace? Here is the
celebrated Court of the Lions, of the Alhambra, with its elegant columns;
then the mysterious Hall of Rest, so-called by the Infidels, with its
profusion of bright ornaments resembling stalactites. Some steps lead you
from these gracious delicacies of Arab art to the robust colonnades of
Philæ and bring you before the gigantic statues of Rhamsés.
Are you a fanatic of
the monuments of the Middle Ages? The most curious fragments of
Romanesque and Gothic architecture abound before you. Then comes the
Renaissance, then the art of Italy: you will have before your eyes,
without going to Florence, the famous doors of bronze of the Baptistry
whose reputation is not exaggerated. It has also been ensured that the
Christian temples of Italy, the castles and the churches of Germany, the
town halls and the manors of Belgium and France, have contributed to these
reproductions. And, everywhere before your eyes, copies of the most
beautiful statues and the most beautiful groups in existence.
If you want to return
from the field of art to that of nature, you will be able to see, in
groves of foreign trees, the meticulous representation of the most
eccentric human races, of which some in truth seem closer to the gorilla
than of the man.
A transept, separated
by a glass partition, forms an immense greenhouse where tropical plants
grow and where some animals and especially beautiful exotic birds are
raised. It is there that they erected parts of the trunk of a Californian
tree which stands 120 meters high: there are 60 of them in little meadows
in the greenhouse.
The Palace contains an
immense orchestra, dominated by a cathedral organ, which can hold 4,000
musicians; a theatre which can hold 5000 people, who, at the time of our
passing by, were listening to the two Marchesio sisters and chorus; a
reading room where 150 newspapers are to be found; a library containing,
among other works, all those which have some relationship to the subjects
of study offered by the Palace; a collection of autographs, a permanent
exhibition of pictures and watercolours which are on sale; a genuine
bazaar where one can buy the most curious products of English industry; a
telegraph office, and finally the inseparable accompaniment to any
gathering, the dining rooms and the largest dining hall in England.
The terrace which
skirts the frontage of the Palace, a very-extended landscape, was
illuminated this day by hazy sunbeams, giving it a particular and
indefinable charm. The shapes did not have the sharp countours that the
more definitive light of the southernmost climates gives them, but this
vagueness seemed closer to the ideal than the reality would be. The light
fell gently upon so many beautiful, strange, odd and admirable things,
created from imagination.
As for the gardens
which extend over a gentle slope, at midday they appear vast and extremely
beautiful, but we have some of comparable beauty in France. Nonetheless,
I admired the orange trees which came there from the castle of Neuilly
which, after 400 years of existence on French soil, were displaced as a
result of the Revolution, to die, like their last owners, on foreign
ground. What we do not have yet are the geological fossil basins,
occupying a space of more than three hectares, that were formed with
hundreds of cubic meters of soil and rocks of various formations, brought
from all sides. There the extraordinary prehistoric animals are scattered,
vanished races which do not exist any more except in a fossil state and
which are reproduced with complete scientific rigour: a bat the size of a
man with a long neck, a lizard the size of an ox, and other fearsome
monsters that we are happy not to have not to contend with, and that one
would believe to be the products of a fantastic imagination, if the ground
had not preserved their petrified remains for us.”
The End of the
Crystal Palace
For
the first 30 years, attendance at the relocated Crystal Palace averaged
2,000,000 people a year. Despite this significant figure, In its 82 year
life the new Crystal Palace never recovered from the debt incurred as a
result of the shortfall in the initial capital raised to fund its
construction. In 1911, the building was declared bankrupt and put up for
auction on November 28th. But on November 29th, the required balance of
£210,000 was paid out of public funds and the building became the property
of the Nation. A body known as the Crystal Palace Trust was established to
manage the property.
During World War I, the building was used as the Royal Naval Shore Station
HMS
Victory VI. During this period, it was known as the HMS Crystal Palace
and was occupied by 125,000 men during World War I.
The
structure survived intact into the 1930’s, but at around 7:30 PM on the
night of November 30, 1936, a fire broke out in the center transept. 438
firemen, 88 fire engines and 749 police officers answered the fire call.
The cause of the fire has never been resolved. The most likely scenario is
that the fire was a simple accident. The core of the building was
destroyed in this fire, never to be rebuilt.
The
south tower was dismantled during the winter of 1940-41. In January of
1941, the Victorian Bandstand was destroyed during a Nazi air raid. The
north tower was utilized during World War II for war work by the British
government and was used for testing dummy bombs before its destruction on
April 16, 1941. Parts of the Park continued to be used by various
government agencies for the duration of the war.
On
October 24, 1950, fire destroyed the last reminders of the Crystal Palace
- the remainder of the south wing and the School of Art. In 1951, the
Crystal Palace Trust was dissolved and ownership transferred to the
Greater London Council. Of the East and West Pavilions, only the East
remains (and “remains” are all that is still there). This area was
"cleaned up" along with Charles Aslin's Concert Bandstand and the
Arboretum for an appearance in the 1969 movie "Women in Love".
In
1990, the Crystal Palace Museum opened on Anerley Hill. It is staffed by
volunteers from the Crystal Palace Foundation, a non-profit organization
dedicated to preserving the history of the Park. In 1994, another relic of
the past, the Concert Bandstand, was destroyed by fire. However, some
remainders of the Crystal Palace can still be seen in Sydenham Park,
including statuary and the reproduction dinosaurs which were a feature of
the Palace, as noted above by Pontécoulant. Debate continues as to the
future use of the Park.
Among the Royal visitors to the new Crystal Palace during its 82 year life
were Napoleon III, Prince Albert, the King and Queen of Greece, Queen
Victoria, the Khedive of Egypt, the Shah of Persia, the Sultan of Turkey,
II, the Sultan of Zanzibar, Tsar Alexander and the Kaiser.
Appendix I - The
original Crystal Palace - Facts and Figures
Length: 563 metres
Width: 124 metres
Total building area: 7.6 hectares (18.78 acres)
Floor area: 71,800 square metres
Height of the main nave: 19,5 metres
Height of the cross nave: 41 metres
Weight of the iron parts: 4,500 tonnes (3,300 pillars, 2,224 carrier
beams, 358 binders)
Wood: 16,800 cubic metres
Glass plates: 293,655 (83,600 square metres)
Pipes: 55 kilometres
Start of construction: 30 July 1850
Workers: in September 1850: 39, from December 1850: approximately 2,000
Exhibition area: 92,200 square metres
Cost: £193,168
Architect Paxton’s fee: 5,000 pounds
Appendix II – The
1851 Exhibition - Facts and figures
Official title: The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All
Nations
Exhibition site: Hyde Park
Area: 10.5 hectares, of which 7.2 hectares for the Crystal Palace
Exhibition area: 8.7 hectares
Duration: 1 May – 11 October 1851 (5 months and 15 days)
Exhibitors: 13, 937 with over one million exhibits, 6,861 of which were
from England, 520 from British colonies and the remaining 6556 from other
countries.
Foreign participants: from 25 countries and 15 British colonies
Total value of exhibits: c. 2 million pounds (excluding the Koh-i-Noor
Diamond, which was considered priceless, and today forms part of the
British crown jewels)
Aggregate length of display tables: 8 miles (13 km).
Visitors: 6,039,205 (about one-fifth of the population of Great Britain at
the time, which was just over 30 million.)
Entrance fees: variable, between one shilling and one pound. General
admission five shillings for the first three weeks. Then lowered to one
shilling.
Hours: 10AM - dusk.
Classification: 4 sections and 30 classes
Jury: 314 members, half from England, half foreign
Prizes: 5,130 awards in three categories. Awards of the first category go
mainly to Britain (46 percent) and France (33 percent)
Cost: 913,000 pounds
Total Gate Receipts – 423, 792 pounds
Total Receipts – 506,100 pounds
Net profit: 406,900 pounds
Appendix III -
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