2-888-578 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Great Exhibition Building in Hyde Park - Portion of the South Front, 1850. 'The South Front of the "Industrial Palace" towards the Kensington-road...when completed, will present upon the whole rather a pleasing elevation, although unbroken throughout by any material projection, either in plan or section. The whole surface, however, being subdivided into panels, and surmounted by open fanlights, and crowned with an ornamental frieze, relieves the eye of all monotonous appearance...In the whole length of the South Front there are altogether seventy-eight cast-iron columns, placed...at intervals of twenty-four feet from centre to centre. Each of these columns stands on an extended base of the same material, three feet in length, and one foot six inches in width, but tapering in plan towards either extremity, and the whole being strengthened by two vertical flanges'. From "Illustrated London News", 1850.