'Design for converting the Crystal Palace into a tower 1,000 ft high! in commemoration of the World's Fair and as a repository of science, art, manual and mechanical operations'
inscribed with title on mount
watercolour
74.5 x 53.3cm (29 5/16 x 21in).
arched top

Footnotes

After the decision was made to move the Crystal Palace exhibition centre from its location in Hyde Park, proposals were invited to redesign the buildings.

The architect C. Burton proposed stacking the iron frame upwards to fifty storeys, thereby becoming the first person in the world to suggest constructing a skyscraper. His designs were published in The Builder in 1851/2.

Construction would be based on metal and glass in a stepped form and would have been an incredible innovation reaching to an extraordinary height for the times.

American historians have been squabbling for years over which building really justifies the description of 'first skyscraper', without realising that it was quietly 'invented' in London thirty years earlier.

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C. Burton(British, 19th century)'Design for converting the Crystal Palace into a tower 1,000 ft high! in commemoration of the World's Fair and as a repository of science, art, manual and mechanical operations'

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C. Burton (British, 19th century)

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C. Burton
(British, 19th century)
'Design for converting the Crystal Palace into a tower 1,000 ft high! in commemoration of the World's Fair and as a repository of science, art, manual and mechanical operations'