Examining the Crystal Palace and Other Cultural Artifacts of the World’s Fairs

Radical designs that still hold cultural relevance today

The Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill. Designed by Joesph Paxton, the building was originally located at Hyde Park, London to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. (Photo courtesy of The Keasbury-Gordon Photograph Archive / Alamy)

Innovative. Transcendent. Powerful. Exciting. These were the words used by those who feasted their eyes on the Crystal Palace that housed the Great Exhibition of 1851, as well as other significant cultural artifacts of the world’s fairs such as the Eiffel Tower. Although many of these artifacts and structures are iconic landmarks today, they were meant to embody a sense of progression and advancement. These cultural artifacts articulated the aims and values that the world’s fairs intended to seek in its visitors. While not all critics agreed, these structures at the world’s fairs signified cultural and artistic achievement through their avant-garde and radical values.

14x10 inch lithograph by Nathaniel Currier entitled “The Magnificent Building, For the World’s Fair of 1851; Built of Iron and Glass, in Hyde Park, London”. (Photo courtesy of D’Amour Museum of Fine Arts)

Held in Hyde Park, London in 1851, the Great Exhibition was the first world’s fair organized to display exhibitions of culture and industry that were new during this time of the nineteenth century. The Great Exhibition helped influence future concepts that would arise in the twentieth-century such as new art forms, cultural exchange and tourism. Organized by Queen…