Unfortunately- this is history!

This building no longer exists - all that remains is the memory!
Crystal Palace is probably the biggest greenhouse ever built. Everyone knows how the greenhouses in the gardens look like or the large industrial greenhouses, used for growing vegetables or other plants. But nothing can be compared with Crystal Palace.
March 13, 1850 year in connection with the upcoming first World's Expo (which took place from May to October 1851 year), the British Building Committee, announced an international competition for a temporary structure that would occur in London's Hyde Park.On this exhibition they wanted to present the latest technological developments. Plenty of projects flowed from all across Europe.

None of the projects was selected  from those that entered the competition. Instead, July 26, 1850 there was chosen, outside from the competition, a draft outsider Joseph Paxton - Cristal Palace. The winner wasn't an architect, or even an engineer - it was a fifty-flower grower and gardener.
Joseph Paxton was a greenhouses designer, which were his great passion. In Chatsworth he has already built two famous greenhouses for the Duke of Devonshire - Great Stove, built in the years 1836-40, which was 84 meters long, 31 wide, 20 height and Lilly House - one for the very rare copies of "Victoria Regia", a great water lily from the Amazonia.

What for CRYSTAL PALACE became known in the exhibition apart from its design and appearance?

The London exhibition was opened May 1, 1851 year, and Cristal Palace had an electrifying impression on the visitors:
1) during the exhibition EXPO among the most spectacular sights of the palace there were also the models of life-size dinosaurs (built by the sculptor Waterhouse Hawkins with close cooperation anatomist Richard Owen, the creator of the term "dinosaur").
2) during a period of six months the World's Fair, this building was visited by 6 million people.
3)you could see there inter alia famous diamond Koh-i-Noor
4) There was a possibility to take advantage of the first public toilets.

Construction:
This building consists the iron structures, which were secured with clear glass panes.
Building dimensions: Length: 560 m, width: 123 m, height: 33 m.
Works on the Crystal Palace, begun September 26, 1850, was completed in January 1851 (amazing that such a large object at that time built within 4 months!).
So quick was the building of the greenhouse with metal and glass of unprecedented dimensions 70.000m 2 (!) was possible thanks to the revolutionary use of "prefabricated" structural components supplied to the construction site in a form ready for assembly (the first time in history). The important role played the materials that are the most modern achievements in contemporary art - a skeleton of iron and malleable cast iron and fills it uniformly thin glass plates.

In Hyde Park Crystal Palace was only for 13 months (4 months-building, 6 months - display, 3 months - demolition).
After the closure of the Exhibition in Hyde Park, Paxton's greenhouse dismantled within three months.
In 1854 the building was built again at the other end of town in the south part of London, in the area of Sydenham Hill - todays Upper Norwood , where it has been increased. (The Sydenham Hill lived and died in 1865, Joseph Paxton, near his work, which survived him about seventy-two years). Numerous exhibitions, shows and concerts were held there.
In the night 30 November 1936 the building almost completely burnt down.
Remains persisted in the same place until 1941.
From the name of the Crystal Palace came the name for residential district of Crystal palace, located in south-east London in the district of Bromley and the name of football club FC Crystal Palace in London. Currently, in the place where the Crystal Palace used to stay, all that is left is a leisure park Crystal Palace, one of the largest in London, with all its installations (models of dinosaurs, the hedge maze). In the Crystal Palace was also the famous racecourse, which parts are preserved today as a path.
Crystal Palace Sports Center will be a part of the Olympic venues during the Olympics in 2012!

Here's how Lothar Bucher, nineteenth-century German immigrant, settled in London, described the Crystal Palace:
"On the outside we see the glass structure supported by a barely visible, slender, steel scaffolding, construction of a gentle, streamlined shapes and elegant curves, so light that almost devoid of weight, giving the impression as if they could at any moment fly up into the air. The building sparkles by the color of the sky visible through the glass covering most of the building and the blue of the narrow iron supports; inundated us blinding glare, collecting sunlight from the sky and water, constantly Flaring ".

"Inside, we can see the delicate network of lines, but we do not have the key, to assess their distance from the eye and the true dimensions. The side walls are too distant from one another, that it can be extended with a single glance. Instead of running from one wall to another, the eye glides in endless perspective, which disappears on the horizon. We can not determine whether the building towers above us at the height of a hundred or a thousand feet, and whether the roof is flat or ribbed, because there is no play of shadows, which would have allowed our assess allow to make the size of the optic nerves. If you leave the sight below, you will encounter an iron, painted in blue beams. At first, followed after a considerable distance, then the crowd getting thicker, until they break their gear shaft of blinding light - the transept - melts in the distant background, in the atmosphere, which absorbs any natural element.

Regards - Team aling.pl