An enormous glass conservatory specially built in Hyde Park for staging the Great Exhibition of 1851. Recognized as revolutionary in its design, it spanned 1,800 ft (550 m) by 450 ft (140 m) at its broadest and was the work of Sir Joseph Paxton.
After the Exhibition, it was taken down and reassembled in Sydenham, south London, where it became the centre of an amusement park with facilities for conferences, concerts and the arts. On the night of 30 Nov 1936 it was destroyed in a fire. The area is still called Crystal Palace today.
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