2-495-353 - The London Archives (City of London)/Heritage Images

The Great Globe, Leicester Square, Westminster, London, c1855. View with a street scene. Wyld's Globe was built in 1851 at the time of the Great Exhibition by James Wyld, a distinguished geographer and MP. Housed inside a purpose-built building was a hollow globe 60 feet in diameter with staircases and platforms from which people could view a representation, to scale, of the Earth's surface. The globe remained in Leicester Square until 1862.