Lost Masterpieces

Rating:
Summary: Stunning memorials to the Industrial Revolution
Review: This collection is worth it for the Crystal Palace alone, the great icon of the Industrial Revolution. The old engravings, photos and exquisite construction details allow you to finally get a sense of this great exposition hall, which was the first of its kind. The text provides a valuable background to Joseph Paxton and the era which saw many innovative changes in materials and construction methods.

But, that's not all, there are two more lost buildings that were instrumental in the development of the modern metal-frame building: the Palais des Machines and the Pennsylvania Station. The first was a daring display of ribbed metal trusses, spanning an enormous distance. Aesthetically, it is a more appealling building than the Crystal Palace as it has the character of the Art Nouveau era with its graceful curves and elegant details. The space is enormous with many wonderful period photos and evocative renderings of the ornamental details. But, again it is the construction details that will grab you as they show you the extent to which this building was impeccably detailed.

The Pennsylvania Station is one of the sad stories in American architectural history. One of the key works of McKim, Mead and White, it was torn down for no reason at all. It is a tour-de-force in Beaux-Artst design, but underneath it was a steel superstructure that brought together the ideas of Paxton and Ferdinand Dutert. It is not as nicely detailed in terms of drawings as are the first two buildings in this collection, but one is still able to sense its former grandeur.

Rating:
Summary: The Crystal Palace - the mid 19th century "megaproject"
Review: While I am interested in architecture in general, the Crystal Palace is the reason why I'm so interested in learning more about it. Truly a 19th century megaproject, mostly forgotten, except in books like these.

Think of this - it is a gigantic glass-and-iron building that's longer than Toronto's CN Tower is tall - using nearly a million square feet of glass, for all the walls and the cielings. It was also one of the first prefabricated modular buildings. Nothing of such a gigantic scale like that had been accomplished before that time - with a huge grand 3-storey tall hallway through the length of the building approximately 60 feet wide by 60 feet high stretching more than 1800 feet long.... Not only this, there was a huge arched transept in the centre that housed some large trees. Even more amazing, this building was built in a scant 4 months, a technical achievement of victorian times.

Although this books cover mainly architecture, it helps to remember that The Crystal Palace was built for a great purpose: the purpose of peace, as the first world's fair, to showcase all the nations' products, early technologies, and cultures. Some of the early "innovations" - such as Jacquard's automated loom - and Otis' safety elevator brake demoed in public - relates to today's technologies! Without the Internet, without the Telephone, and without many of the communications technologies - this world fair had a huge impact in communicating these innovations to other nations. It is not surprising that it helped accelerate the pace of inventions over the decades, at a time when communications is nowhere nearly as prevalent as today, and travel was a time consuming affair was often by sail, steam, or horse power. Despite these difficulties, the Great Exhibition of 1851 was a spetacular success, earned profit, and attracted huge numbers of people despite difficult travel. It is generally considered to be more successful than even all of the 20th century world's fair. All this in itself, makes the Crystal Palace building more fascinating. This is the definitive, original Crystal Palace - not the smaller copycats that popped up in other nations.

It is not easy to find books that relates to the Crystal Palace architecture still in print and available for purchase online.