A plan of Crystal Palace for the sale by auction of 1911

HORNE & Co.

Plan of Crystal Palace, Sydenham. For Sale by Auction by Howard Frank, of Messrs. Knight, Frank & Rutley, and J. Roy Lancaster of Messrs. Horne & Co.
London: Knight, Frank & Rutley, 1911. Tinted lithograph, 1010 x 1270mm.

Laid on linen, original binding folds.

A large plan of Crystal Palace, adapted from the Ordnance Survey by the surveyors Horne & Co, and lithographed by Martin, Hood & Larkin. It was published in the auction catalogue for the auction sale of Crystal Palace in 1911, and details the grounds and the buildings in the immediate surroundings, including the railways stations and fire station. It shows the site of 'Sir Hiram Maxim's Captive Flying Machines', a fairground ride designed by the inventor of the Maxim machine gun.
The Crystal Palace was built in Hyde Park as a temporary building to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. Such was its popularity that it was re-erected in modified form at a permanent home in Sydenham in 1852, with two new railway stations to service it.
Despite many successful exhibitions the owners went bankrupt in 1909; an announcement in The Times on 11th September 1911 set the date of the sale as 28th November 1911. However the auctioneer, Howard Frank, started a campaign to get the park saved for the nation. He had a luxurious brochure produced, containing fifty-two pages of photographs and engravings and sixty-four pages of text. It weighed approximately 3lb (without this map which was in a separate cover) and measured 16 x 11". The Lord Mayor of London, Sir Thomas Strong, called a meeting at the Mansion House for 23 October, for 'all public bodies and persons interested in the acquisition of the Crystal Palace and its grounds for the use of the public forever'. The Mayor of Hampstead, William Woodward, wrote a letter to The Times, worried that the grounds were in danger of being given over to 'football matches and other attractions for vulgar mobs'. Fortunately Robert Windsor-Clive, Lord Plymouth and Lord Lieutenant of Glamorgan, came forward with a deposit of £20,000 and, after reaching an agreement with the Court of Chancery, the rest of the sale price of £210,000. On the 9th November The Times ran a headline 'THE CRYSTAL PALACE SAVED'; by 1913 a fund started by the Lord Mayor was used to buy the park from Lord Plymouth.


Stock ID : 16884