Paxton, Joseph, English gardener, architect and Member of Parliament, best known for designing The Crystal Palace (1803–1865). Autograph letter signed.

€ 500.00

To Lady Eagerton, explaining that "You can get from here to the [Crystal] Palace to see the fancy fair, & if you like to ask half a dozen gentlemen to come to the dance we shall be happy to see them, they must be at Rockhills by about eight o clock from whence they will be passed to the Ball room [...]“.

At the end of the Great Exhibition of 1851 the Crystal Palace was dismantled from Hyde Park and re-erected at Sydenham. Covering eighteen acres and one of the greatest design and engineering feats of the 19th century, it unfortunately burnt down in 1936. Ruskin rather loftily called it a "greenhouse larger than ever greenhouse was built before".