NYC’s first architectural wonder went down in flames
On Oct. 5, 1858, in what we now know as Bryant Park, a majestic building of iron and glass, regarded worldwide as an architectural wonder, erupted in flames. Within a half-hour, the massive structure had collapsed, leaving little but black smoke and jagged debris in its wake.
The Crystal Palace was modeled after a similar groundbreaking building in London. But despite stunning the world with its beauty, mismanagement and national chaos relegated New York’s Crystal Palace to the dustbin of history, barely remembered today.
The new book “The Finest Building in America: The New York Crystal Palace 1853-1858” by Edwin G. Burrows (Oxford University Press), out now, tells the tale, starting with the building’s origins at the first world’s fair in London in 1851.
The UK Crystal Palace was built to showcase 13,000 exhibits from 40 countries. Six-hundred yards long by 150 yards wide, it covered almost 19 acres and at 108 feet high was tall enough to “enclose spectacular fountains and several full-grown elms.” Composed of “a million plate glass panels set in prefabricated iron frames and bolted together,” the building was completed in just seven months.
Horace Greeley, editor of the New-York Tribune, called it “one of the noblest, most magnificent, most graceful edifices ever seen” and believed it would revolutionize architecture.
As international renown grew, newspapers throughout the US pushed for a World’s Fair in New York with our own version of the Crystal Palace.
The idea caught on, and the American Crystal Palace was initially scheduled to be built in Madison Square Park. But when local residents sued, fearing it would be “overrun by riffraff,” the location was changed to Reservoir Square, the “desolate onetime potter’s field” we now know as Bryant Park.
At the time, 42nd Street was the northernmost developed section of New York City, and the square sat next to a reservoir. The New York Times scoffed at the plan, writing that the area was “a desert of rocks and untamed lots, with goats feeding at random.”
Construction, which started in October 1852, faced a host of problems. When the building’s board voted to eliminate the basement in the architects’ plan to save money, it caused other issues, such as necessary modifications to the structure’s domed roof. By the time construction was complete, the project cost twice its $300,000 budget.
Despite this, the exhibition and the building were sensations when they opened on July 14, 1853. Twenty-thousand people saw the exhibition the first day, with another 30,000 filling Sixth Avenue to gawk at the gleaming palace. Even the president of the United States, Franklin Pierce, was there to give the building a grand American welcome.
The Crystal Palace, like its inspiration, was regarded as a triumph. Harper’s wrote that “architecturally [it] is beyond all doubt one of the most strikingly beautiful fabrics ever erected in this country.” Walt Whitman, then a young poet who “came so often that the police grew suspicious and began to follow him around,” found that the palace was “unsurpassed anywhere for beauty.”
But while the Crystal Palace was deemed a work of art, the exhibition’s attendance quickly declined and both were victims of mismanagement.
By February 1854, the building’s association was $125,000 in debt — around $3.5 million in today’s dollars. Most of the board was replaced, and showman P.T. Barnum was placed in charge.
But even his promotional wizardry — including a 1,500-member musical group he hired to perform there — couldn’t ease the building’s financial woes. Barnum resigned in July, and the association decided to close the exhibition for good that October.
There was talk of dismantling or relocating the building, and a planned auction of its contents was “canceled for lack of interest.” Rented out for periodic events for several years, it mostly deteriorated from neglect.
Then, at around 5 p.m. on Oct. 5, 1858, a fire sparked in a storeroom and tore through the palace. Several thousand people fled in a panic — amazingly, no one was killed or seriously injured — and within a half-hour, the Crystal Palace was nothing but a heap of smoldering debris.
It was never determined what caused the fire and with the Civil War on the horizon, the building and its tragic end were virtually forgotten.
But the palace did have one long-term effect on the city. Prior to its construction, New York was not yet a tourist destination. The Crystal Palace began New York City’s long history as a vacation spot.
“New York before 1853 had nothing like the Crystal Palace to reel in sightseers . . . people came to New York on business, not for pleasure,” Burrows writes.
“Only after the Crystal Palace opened in 1853 would New York even start to look like a desirable place to visit in its own right.”