...and the Crystal Palace was one of the most remarkable ever built. It had 293,655 panes of glass, 330 huge iron columns, 24 miles of gutters and featured the largest roof ever made.

The building was erected to house the works of the nascent Industrial revolution -- the beginning of our modern era. Steam was building factories and railways and would soon be followed by other technologies -- electricity, radio, combustion engines, the telephone, the computer, and even as we write: The Internet. But that's another chapter.

The chapter under discussion began in January 1850, when Prince Albert convened the Commissions for the Exhibition, an Exhibition that would show the works of all nations, a Universal Exhibition that would have every machine known to man. And if it didn't have EVERY machine, it came darn close; the building housed over 100,000 exhibits.

The United States provided stuffed squirrels and a McCormack Reaper. Lucifer matches were the latest modern convenience, an envelope making machine could do 60 units a minute, and, of course, steam engines. Lots of steam engines.

One exhibit showed how powdered graphite could be reformed into a block without binder -- the birth of the common yellow pencil. Which, by the way is yellow because at the time in question high-quality pencils were made of cedar or other expensive woods. By painting the pencils, they could use a cheaper wood, painting over the imperfections. Since the inside of the pencil was black and this device had been developed in Vienna, it was decided that the outside must be yellow in honor of the Austro-Hungarian flag.

Over 230 designs were submitted for the building. Joseph Paxton produced his winning design for a Crystal Palace on a piece of blotting paper, then submitted the final design in less than 9 days. The building itself was erected in six months. And they say things moved slower in those days!

The painting above is by an anonymous artist and we don't know where or how we acquired it. If you know where it comes from we'd appreciate it if you'd let us know.

This is our third architectural tour. Many of the images repeat those we visited the first couple of times around. The others have been gathered over the past few years.

To see them all, either click on the name of the artist in the list below or, if you prefer, take a quiet walking tour of the buildings, clicking on the "next" arrows at the bottom of each page (including this one). You can get the title of the work by passing your mouse over the image.

Each of the images is accompanied by a link to the place from whence it came. Most of the links go to graphics sites, which tend to carry heavy traffic. The result is that you may have problems connecting to them. Keep at it -- most of the sites are well worth the trouble.