The Upper Gallery

This picture depicts the reconstruction of the upper gallery of the Crystal Palace in 1854. The first example of prefabricated architecture, Sir Joseph Paxton's glass and iron structure was originally built in 1851 to house "The Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations", a mammoth exposition of technological marvels and historical exhibits from around the world. The building's modular structure--bolted ironwork fitted with 900,000 feet of precut glass--was shockingly modern, its appearance directly revealing the materials and process of its construction. The Crystal Palace proved so popular with spectators that it was disassembled and rebuilt in Sydenham, south of London, where it was used as a museum and concert hall until its destruction by fire in 1936.
Delamotte's pictures of the Crystal Palace's reconstruction are among the medium's first photographic images created to document the marvels of modern engineering. Its design generated by the speeding recession of the structure's ironwork, this photograph seems to reflect the new medium's inherent and perhaps unique ability to capture the advent of modernity.