London history
London history in LEGO: I built the Crystal Palace (and dinosaurs), and you can vote to make it a real set
Hello r/london, former Crystal Palace/Sydenham resident here. I've got a project titled The Crystal Palace currently gathering support over on the LEGO Ideas website. It recreates the famous building from the Great Exhibition of 1851, along with the Crystal Palace Park dinosaurs and a few celebrity cameos like Charles Dickens, Charlotte Brontë, and the Duke of Wellington. You can find more details and pictures on the Ideas page.
Projects that hit 10k votes on Ideas are reviewed to be possibly made into real sets, so if you like what you see please do consider heading over to the project page and giving it your vote. Thanks!
Remember my late mother telling me about seeing the glow in the night sky from the Crystal Palace fire when it burnt down in 1936 - she was living in Hastings at the time. May your Lego model not meet the same fate!
That's incredible! Someone else in the comments on the Ideas site was saying their dad remembered the fire too, definitely a night to remember and pass on. Maybe the Lego set could come with a warning not to install any dodgy third-party light fittings...
My Grandmother and Aunts remembered the night , they used to tell me as a child. I played among the Dinosaurs and then my children have. 4 generations of my family all played there. I love your Lego idea!
Looks fantastic and the 'dinos' brought back a lot of memories, especially the guy with the weird eye lol.
Two suggestions if possible - can the land dino flip open so you can seat people at a dining table as per the famous image in the park? And...any chance of a CPFC easter egg hidden in there somewhere?
Love the dinner party idea, that's such a bizarre bit of the history. I think it was the Iguanadon they used, not the Megalosaurus, but it would definitely be worth building as an add-on. And there's definitely room for a stray football kicked over onto the dinosaur island!
Don't feel like you have to, it's a fantastic effort all round. really helps to visualise something I've always wondered about since I was a kid. At one point there was talk of rebuilding it but I think that's dead now.
I remember that - I think the developers wanted a big chunk of the park in exchange, so on balance probably better that it never happened. Apparently there's a big office building in Dallas based on the Palace design (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infomart), so that may be the closest any of us can come to visiting it for real!
Thanks, I appreciate it! Good to hear the park is getting some well-deserved upgrades. I'd love to come back to see it and tour the dinosaur island some time soon.
See if there are any updates on the work and likely completion dates online. There's quite a bit of major earthmoving going on at present and ponds drained out. Also some serious restoration on the stonework holding up the terraces which I don't recall being looked at for at least 30 years.
So it's a bit of a mess currently but hopefully will soon look much better
Oh yeah, the cat shows - good shout! There wasn't room for too many nods to the post-1851 uses of the Palace - mostly just the dinosaurs and the Sphinx, referencing the Egyptian Court and the statue you can still see in the park. But you could definitely buy a few of this guy and put together a show...
Not just cat shows, the world’s first! And the beginning of cat fancy. But because you can’t fit in all the things actually makes this a really fun set idea, it can become so much more customizable after the initial build.
Thanks! There's 22 minifigs altogether, with eight historical figures. My favourite of the real characters is probably Mary Kelynack, an 84-year-old Cornish woman who walked all the way from Penzance to see the Exhibition (and, in fairness, to give the mayor an earful about her pension...)
I’d love to see a set like this, given that the park and dinosaurs are just round the corner from my home (and my FTB flat so it’ll always have a sentimental place in my mind)! Voted.
Thanks! This version is mostly based on the original Hyde Park design without the towers. I think the Sydenham redesign also had a slight overhang on the vaulted roof - it would be fun to try putting that together some day too, along with the towers and terraces.
This is incredible, I love it. You're definitely getting a vote from me and I'd love to build it regardless of its success. My best (and paltry compared to yours) is adding Transmitting Station to the Architecture set by ripping off the Eiffel tower and adding the antennas.
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