An excerpt from the London Exhibition’s “New Crystal Palace Polka,” 1851.

This piece of dance music was written in honor of the 1851 London Exhibition. The sheet music has a color lithograph featuring the Exhibition’s crowning architectural wonder, the massive glass-and-cast-iron Crystal Palace showing its facade with flags flying and landscaped Hyde Park grounds crowded with visitors. In 1851, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert opened the “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations,” an international fair attended by six million visitors showcasing engineering, technology, agriculture, and the arts. The innovative, greenhouse-like building was over 1,800 feet long and was capable of holding over 100,000 objects from hairpins to steam hammers, representing 14,000 exhibitors, half from the British Empire, half from other nations.

Citation Information
Trekell, J. Theodore, excerpt from “The New Crystal Palace Polka,” Digital Public Library of America, https://dp.la/item/f3063237ddd8ec3113b834c57d568667.
Note: These citations are programmatically generated and may be incomplete.
Courtesy of California State University, Fresno via California Digital Library.

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