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Alexandra Palace, Muswell Hill and Wood Green, North London. Architects: John Johnson (1807-1888) with Alfred Meeson (1808-1885). Builders: Kelk and Lucas. 1873; rebuilt after fire by the same team, 1875; badly damaged again by fire in 1980, and now partly restored. Photograph, caption, and commentary by Jacqueline Banerjee. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL.]

Cast-iron and steel columns with walls of white Huntingdon and yellow stock brick embellished with patterned red brickwork in the Italianate style.... Classical mouldings and ornaments made of Portland cement. PLAN: symmetrical about a great central hall which corresponded with the central transept of the original building and runs between the north and south frontispieces which survived from that building. Flanking the great hall were open courtyard areas leading to domed and glazed spaces.... Central pedimented and gabled frontispiece with large recessed rose window, now blocked, above entrance porch which connected to the approach from the former railway station.... The Palace is a renowned London landmark, a rare survival of a building type, and it has a unique place in the history of British popular education and entertainment. (Government list description, qtd. in Quatrefoil's "Alexandra Palace.")

In 1858, the influential architect and designer Owen Jones proposed a new exhibition and entertainment centre in north London, publishing plans for a huge glazed structure there. He hoped it would be as popular as the Crystal Palace, but his proposal foundered. The idea persisted, however, and a more solid "Palace for the People" was finally built by the firm of Kelk and Lucas, to designs by John Johnson in partnership with the architect and civil engineer Alfred Meeson. It was called after the future Edward VII's Danish wife, and opened by Queen Victoria on her birthday, 24 May 1873 — only to burn down again after sixteen days. Almost all the contents were destroyed. This must have been one of the catastrophes which prevented iron and glass from being used as extensively in architecture as their early advocates (such as Owen himself) had envisaged. A later inferno in 1980 showed how damagingly the thin iron roofing-frames could be twisted by heat. Nevertheless, in 1873 the original architectural and building team simply set to work again with the same materials, and rebuilt the Palace with improvements aimed at reducing future fire risks. They replaced the central dome with a curved roof 85' wide and "supported by a forest of pillars" ("A Palace for the People"), and provided storage for nearly 100,000 gallons of water in the four corner towers and in reservoirs built into the end walls of the Great Hall. When the Palace reopened in 1875 it still had iron columns very much like those seen at railway stations; the exterior valencing also suggests the cross-influence of railway architecture. Indeed, a dedicated branch-line used to bring a train service right up to the Palace.

The scale of the enterprise was enormous. The Great Hall a