When it was built, in 1851, the Crystal Palace in London was a true pride of Victorian civilization, a prodigy of iron architecture. Completed in a few months of work in Hyde Park – and inaugurated by the Queen herself.
After hosting the Great exhibition of 1851, (it was the reason why it was built) it was dismantled and reassembled in a park a little outside the city, in Sydenham Hill, around which an elegant neighborhood arose.
For decades it continued to host exhibitions, events and concerts (under its glass vaults, for example, the first exhibition on dinosaurs took place). Until the fateful night of November 30, 1936.
That evening Sir Henry Buckland, the director of the company that managed the huge building, was walking his dog with his daughter, who was named Crystal, in honor of the building. He noticed a glow coming from the windows: when he entered inside, he discovered some of his employees already busy putting out a fire.
The firefighters were called, but the building, filled as it was with flammable objects and with an all-wooden floor, was a goner: it burned for hours, lighting up the sky for kilometers away.
Thousands of people flocked from all over the city to witness the fire. Among them was also Winston Churchill (who turned 62 that day) who commented: “It’s the end of an era.”