After the Great Exhibition closed in October 1851, the Crystal Palace was dismantled, moved to a south London hill, and reassembled at larger scale. It stood there for the next 82 years. How did it end?
A small electrical fire in a staff lavatory escaped containment around 7 PM on 30 November 1936. The building's dry timber panelling and massive ventilation produced conditions in which the fire crossed the entire 1,800-foot length in two hours. About 200,000 people watched it burn from the surrounding south London hills; the glow was visible from eight counties. None of the alternatives are true: the surviving twin water towers were demolished in 1941 (preventatively, so the Luftwaffe couldn't use them as navigation landmarks during the actual Blitz), but the main building had been gone for five years already.
Read the full story →The Crystal Palace housed the Great Exhibition of 1851, was moved to a south London hill, and stood there for eighty-five years. On the night of 30 November 1936 it caught fire and burned to the ground in a single evening. Two hundred thousand people watched.
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