3-047-020 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Interior of the Vienna Exhibition Building, 1872. 'The Vienna Universal Exhibition of Arts and Industry will be of great commercial importance...Machinery, of course, will form an important feature of the Exhibition, and we would call the attention of English manufacturers to the opportunity afforded to exhibit steam-boilers, steam-engines..., and steam generators...The Exhibition Palace is admirably situated in the magnificent public park, called the Prater. The area will embrace from four to five English square miles. The covered space...will be about 1,150,000 square feet...It is designed by Herr Karl Hasenauer, an eminent Austrian architect...A rotunda will rise from the centre of the building...[and] when finished, will be the largest canopy-shaped edifice without supports which has ever been erected. It has an outside diameter of 353 feet, and its height is 275 feet; so that it is twice as large in span as the dome of St. Peter's at Rome, or that of the London Great Exhibition of 1862...the roof of the dome rises 250 ft. above the floor. The rotunda is being constructed of iron, after a design by Mr. Scott Russell...Our Illustration gives a view of the interior of the Exhibition Palace, as it will appear when thronged with people'. From "Illustrated London News", 1872.