page_title: Garden Palace
section_title: Description and history
hierarchical_section_title: Garden Palace / Description and history
caption_attribution_description: The Garden Palace [NRS 4481 SH1409] On September 22nd 1882 the Garden Palace fire occurred. The Garden Palace was built in only eight months to house the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879 in the southwestern end of the Royal Botanic Gardens. At the time of the fire a number of government departments housed records in the Palace so that when fire completely engulfed the timber building a number of significant documents, such as the 1881 Census, were destroyed. &#187; View the Garden Palace Fire Gallery (photos and documents including a report by the night watchman) Rights: No known copyright restrictions www.records.nsw.gov.au/about-us/rights-and-permissions We'd love to hear from you if you use our photos. Many other photos in our collection are available to view and browse on our website using Photo Investigator.
context_page_description: The Garden Palace was a large, purpose-built exhibition building constructed to house the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879 in Sydney, Australia. It was designed by James Barnet and constructed by John Young, at a cost of £191,800 in only eight months. This was largely due to the importation from England of electric lighting, which enabled work to be carried out around the clock.
context_section_description: A reworking of London's Crystal Palace, the plan for the Garden Palace was similar to that of a large cathedral, having a long hall with lower aisle on either side, like a nave, and a transept of similar form, each terminating in towers and meeting beneath a central dome. The successful contractor was John Young, a highly experienced building contractor who had worked on the Crystal Palace for The Great Exhibition of 1851 and locally on the General Post Office and Exhibition Building at Prince Alfred Park. The dome was 100 feet (30.4 metres) in diameter and 210 feet (65.5 metres) in height.  The building was over 244 metres long and had a floor space of over 112,000 metres with 4.5 million feet of timber, 2.5 million bricks and 243 tons of galvanised corrugated iron. The building was similar in many respects to the later Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. Sydney's first hydraulic lift, was contained in the north tower, enabling visitors to climb the tower. The Garden Palace was sited at what is today the southwestern end of the Royal Botanic Garden (although at the time it was built it occupied land that was outside the Garden and in The Domain). It was constructed primarily from timber, which ensured its complete destruction when engulfed by fire in the early morning of 22 September 1882.
  The Garden Palace at that time was used by a number of Government Departments and many significant records were destroyed in the fire, notably records of squatting occupation in New South Wales. Most importantly, however, 500-1000 pieces of Sydney Aboriginal artefacts were also lost in this fire.
  The only extant remains of the Garden Palace are its carved Sydney sandstone gateposts and wrought iron gates, located on the Macquarie Street entrance to the Royal Botanical Garden.
  A 1940s-era sunken garden and fountain featuring a statue of Cupid marks the former location of the Palace's dome. Few artefacts from the International Exhibition survived the fire, one of which is a carved graphite statue of an elephant, from Ceylon, now in the collection of the Powerhouse Museum. An 1878 Bechstein concert grand piano, that had won the musical instrument first prize at the Exhibition, but had luckily been removed from the Garden Palace prior to the fire, is also held by the Powerhouse.
caption: The Garden Palace
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