The Albert Palace: They Demolished a Dream (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798473814040)

Nearly as long and as tall as the Houses of Parliament, it was the other Crystal Palace. It was one that no-one talks about; no-one remembers. Barrel-vaulted, cast iron and glass, it looked just the same as the 1851 Crystal Palace, by then transferred many miles out of London to piece of flat land in Sydenham. The difference was this. The Albert Palace was built within two miles of Hyde Park Corner.

The Albert Palace opened on a wet Whitsun day in May 1885. By September that same year its owners were in receivership. There followed nearly ten years of Jarndyce-style squabbling between the government that wanted its real estate back to sell off for houses, the owners who thought that collapsing the company would make their debts disappear and the creditors who just wanted to get paid.

But the Albert Palace did not begin its existence in a corner of Battersea Park. It had once lived another life.

The story is about the people that touched the building. That list includes two Lord Mayors of London; the shopkeeper with a taste for making money from the oriental named Arthur Lasenby Liberty; designer Christopher Dresser; the founder of Price Waterhouse Coopers; a plainly dishonest minister of the Crown; a disgraced company promoter whose colourful prospectuses had led many to invest in dubious public companies; a man who once built the largest pipe organ in the world inside his house; an impresario who afterwards went on to 'invent' seaside holidays; along with 47 Indian craftsmen and performers 'imported' from Calcutta and abandoned in south west London.

Author: Martin Hedges
ISBN-13: 9798473814040
Publisher: Independently Published
Language: English
Published: 09/18/2021
Pages: 296
Format: Paperback
Weight: 0.88lbs
Size: 9.00h x 6.00w x 0.62d