Garden Palace Facts for Kids

Garden Palace at the Sydney International Exhibition (1879)

The Garden Palace was a huge building made for a special event called the Sydney International Exhibition in 1879. It was built in Sydney, Australia, to show off amazing inventions and art from around the world. Sadly, just three years later, in 1882, the entire building was completely destroyed by a fire.

The famous architect James Barnet designed the palace. A skilled builder named John Young constructed it. It cost a lot of money, about £191,800, but it was built incredibly fast in only eight months! This was possible because electric lights were brought from England, allowing workers to build day and night.

What Was the Garden Palace?
Images for kids
See also

What Was the Garden Palace?

An engraving of the Garden Palace from 1879

The Garden Palace was a magnificent building, much like a grand cathedral. It had a long main hall with smaller sections on each side, similar to a church's nave. There was also a cross-shaped section called a transept. All these parts met under a huge central dome.

A Grand Design

The palace in 1880

The builder, John Young, was very experienced. He had even worked on the famous Crystal Palace in London for the Great Exhibition of 1851. He also helped build important local buildings like the General Post Office in Sydney.

The central dome of the Garden Palace was 30 meters (100 feet) wide and 64 meters (210 feet) tall. The building itself was over 244 meters long. It had a massive floor space of more than 112,000 square meters. To build it, workers used 4.5 million feet of timber, 2.5 million bricks, and 243 tons of corrugated iron.

Building a Giant

An architectural drawing of Sydney's Garden Palace from the 1870s

The Garden Palace was quite similar to the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne, which was built later. It even had Sydney's very first hydraulic lift in its north tower! This lift allowed visitors to go up and enjoy amazing views.

The palace was located at what is now the southwestern part of the Royal Botanic Garden. At the time, this area was part of The Domain. Because it was mostly built from timber, it was very vulnerable to fire.

A Sad End: The Great Fire

The Garden Palace engulfed in flames, from the Illustrated Sydney News, 1882.

In the early morning of September 22, 1882, a terrible fire broke out. Because the building was made mostly of wood, it burned down completely.

Many important things were lost in the fire. Several government offices were using the Garden Palace at the time. This meant that many valuable historical records were destroyed. These included records about squatting (when people settled on land without owning it) in New South Wales. Between 500 and 1000 precious Aboriginal artefacts from Sydney were also lost forever in this fire.

What's Left Today?

Today, only a few parts of the Garden Palace remain. You can still see its carved Sydney sandstone gateposts and wrought iron gates. They stand at the Macquarie Street entrance to the Royal Botanic Garden.

Where the palace's dome once stood, there is now a sunken garden and a fountain. This garden was created in the 1940s and features a statue of Cupid.

Very few items from the 1879 International Exhibition survived the fire. Luckily, an 1878 Bechstein concert grand piano, which had won a top prize, was moved out of the Garden Palace before the fire. This piano is now kept at the Powerhouse Museum. The State Library of NSW also has a few items related to the Garden Palace, including a piece of glass melted by the fire, a handkerchief, and a book of poetry about the palace.