The Crystal Palace
Joseph Paxton · 1851
The Crystal Palace was a cast iron and plate glass exhibition hall built for the Great Exhibition of 1851. It measured 1,851 feet long and 128 feet high internally. Its modular design followed the dimensions of glass panes supplied by Chance Brothers. It was completed in thirty-nine weeks by 2,000 men at a cost of £79,800. It used 293,000 panes of glass—the greatest area ever seen in a building—and astonished visitors with clear walls and ceilings that required no interior lighting. Its construction relied on recent advances in glass and cast iron manufacturing and the abolition of the glass tax. It demonstrated British industrial capability in iron and glass.
