The wonders of the world

by John Loraine Abbott

It was to be hoped that this splendid building, filled with the products of the industry and art of all nations, might have remained permanently in New York, to be an ornament to the city, and a museum for the entertainment and instruction of visitors from every part of the country and the world; but since the above was written, it has been decided that the building is to be taken down, either for removal to some other place, or for the sale of its materials.

THE CRYSTAL PALACE IN LONDON.

Having spoken of the New York crystal palace, we now pass to the crystal palace of London, which preceded the former in the order of time, and far surpassed it in size and magnificence. This splendid building, erected for the great exhibition of 1851, was located on the south side of Hyde park, near the Kensington road, in a position highly favorable in all respects to its intended objects. The construction of the edifice presented not a few difficulties. The building committee, comprising some of the leading architects and engineers of Great Britain, advertised for plans to be presented for the building; and as the result, no less than two hundred and forty designs were laid before them. A large part of these were at once put aside as utterly worthless; and then from about sixty, which were thought worthy of consideration, the committee proceeded to prepare a design which pleased nobody, not even themselves. This plan, however, such as it was, was decided upon, and advertisements were issued for proposals to build it. Objections were at once raised, both against the plan proposed, and the possibility of its execution; but while the committee, perplexed with the difficulties suggested, were doubting what they should do, relief came to them from an unexpected quarter, which we must go back a little to explain.

In 1839, Sir Robert Schomburg, a distinguished botanist, in going up the river Berbice, in Demerara, had discovered in the still waters of the stream, a gigantic water-lily, of a shape hitherto unknown, and had transmitted some of its seeds to England, where the plant growing from them, under the care of Joseph Paxton, the head gardener of the Duke of Devonshire, was called the Victoria Regia. This plant was the occasion, and in some respects the model for the crystal palace. Every means was adopted to place this wonderful exotic in its accustomed circumstances. A tropical soil was formed for it, of burned loam and peat. Coal-heat was substituted for that of the tropical sun; and by means of a wheel, a ripple, like that of its native river, was communicated to the waters of the tank upon which its broad leaves reposed in beauty. In these circumstances the lily grew luxuriantly, and Mr. Paxton was obliged to plan an edifice capable of holding it. This he was doing just about the time when the committee were poring wearily over their two hundred and forty plans; and in June, he drew out a design for the exhibition building, which had been suggested to his mind while preparing an abode for the Victoria Regia. In ten days he had completed his elevations, sections, working plans and specifications; and the whole being submitted to the inspection of competent and influential persons, was unanimously declared to be practicable, and the only practicable scheme presented.

The design, thus prepared, was next laid before the contractors, Messrs. Fox & Henderson, who at once determined to submit a tender for the construction of a building in accordance with it. And in a single week, they had calculated the amount and cost of every pound of iron, every pane of glass, every foot of wood, and every hour of labor, which would be required, and were prepared with an offer and specifications for the construction of the edifice. But here arose a difficulty. The committee had advertised only for proposals for carrying out their own design; but, fortunately, they had invited the suggestion, on the part of contractors, of any improvements on it; and so Mr. Paxton’s plan was presented simply as “an improvement” upon that of the committee, though it had not a single feature in common with it. This, with certain modifications, was adopted; and the result was the celebrated crystal palace, the first of the name, and the suggester of all others of the same general character—the great, original crystal palace; itself the greatest wonder of the most wonderful exhibition the world has ever seen!

The building consisted, or rather still consists, of three series of elevations, of the respective hights of sixty-four, forty-four, and twenty-four feet, intersected at the central point of meeting, by a transept of seventy-two feet in width, having a semicircular roof rising to the hight of one hundred and eight feet in the center. It extended in length eighteen hundred and fifty-one feet from north to south, or more than one-third of a mile, with a breadth of four hundred and fifty-six feet on the ground; thus covering a surface of some eighteen acres, or nearly double the extent of Washington square in New York, and exceeding, by more than one-half, the dimensions of the Park or the Battery. The whole rested upon cast-iron pillars, united by bolts and nuts, fixed to flanges perfectly true, so that if the socket was placed level, the columns and connecting pieces could not but stand upright; and in point of fact, not a single crooked line, it is said, was discoverable in the combination of such an immense number of pieces in the building as first erected, or as it now stands. For the support of the columns, holes were dug in the ground, in each of which was placed a bed of concrete, and upon this rested the iron sockets, of from three to four feet in length, according to the level of the ground; to which sockets the columns were firmly attached by bolts and nuts. At the top, each column was attached by a girder to its opposite column, both longitudinally and transversely, so that the whole eighteen acres of pillars were securely framed together.

The roofs, of which there were five, one to each of the elevations, were constructed on the ridge and furrow principle, and glazed with sheets of glass of forty-nine inches in length. The construction will be easily understood, by imagining a series of parallel rows of the letter V, extending (thus,

) in uninterrupted lines the whole length of the building. The apex of each ridge was formed by a wooden sash-bar, with notches on each side for holding the laths in which the edges of the glass were fitted. The bottom bar, or rafter, was hollowed at the top, so as to form a gutter to carry off the water, which passed through transverse gutters into the iron columns, which were made hollow so as to serve as water-pipes; while in the base of each column a horizontal pipe was inserted to convey the accumulated water into the sewers. The exhalations from so large a surface, from the plants and from the breath of the innumerable visitors, rising against the glass and there being condensed, would, if the roof had been flat, have descended in the form of a perpetual mist, or dropping rain; but it was found that from glass pitched at a particular angle, the moisture did not fall, but would glide down its surface. The bottom bars, therefore, were grooved on the inside, thus forming interior gutters, by which the moisture found its way down the interior of the columns, and thus through the drainage pipes into the sewers. These grooved rafters, of which the total length was two hundred and five miles, were formed by machinery, at a single operation.

The lower tier of the building was boarded; the walls of the upper portion being composed, like the roof, of glass. Ventilation was provided for by the basement portion being walled with iron plates, placed at an angle of forty-five degrees, known as luffer-boarding, which admits the air freely, while it excludes the rain. A similar provision was made at the top of each tier of the building; the plates all being so constructed that they could be closed at pleasure. In order to subdue the intense light in a building having such an immense extent of glass surface, the whole roof and the south side were covered with canvas, which also precluded any possible injury from hail, as well as rendered the edifice much cooler than it otherwise would have been.