3-039-127 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Opening of the Royal Albert Hall by the Queen: the Prince of Wales declaring the Hall open, 1871. 'The Royal Albert Hall of Arts and Sciences, Kensington-gore, [in London], was opened by her Majesty the Queen [Victoria]...The building...has been nearly four years in construction. Its foundation-stone was laid by the Queen May 20, 1867. The project of its erection was actually set on foot, in 1865, by a committee of which his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales was president, meeting at Marlborough House. But the idea had been entertained in 1862, as an accompaniment to the personal Memorial of the late Prince Consort, a statue enshrined beneath an architectural Gothic cross, with supporting groups of sculpture, which will stand in Hyde Park directly opposite the hall. It was remembered that the lamented Prince had wished to see this site, north of the Horticultural Society's Gardens, as well as the space to the south of those gardens, where the Exhibition of 1862 was held, and grounds of the South Kensington Museum, on the east side, occupied by several great public edifices devoted to scientific and artistic culture'. From "Illustrated London News", 1871.