The Sydney International Exhibition opened the doors of its main building the 'Garden Palace' on 17 September 1879 and closed them seven months later. Many figures in colonial Sydney talked of the success of the huge project but the 1,045,898 visitors that passed through its gates were perhaps the most eloquent testimony to its triumph.
The main feature of the Sydney exhibition, like the international ones that preceded it, was an ornate building, the 'Garden Palace', which was over 244 metres long and had a floor space of over 112,000 metres. This photograph is a page from a book of photographs of the interior and exterior of this building published by Richards and Company, the official photographers for the exhibition in 1880. There photographic display can be seen in one of the photographs 91/1323-16. This building, and a number of smaller ones, was erected in the grounds of the Sydney Domain where it dominated the Sydney skyline for three brief years before the 'Garden Palace' was destroyed by fire in 1882.
These photographs are significant to the Powerhouse museum because the 'Technological, Industrial and Sanitary Museum', as the Powerhouse was then known, had earmarked objects on display to be among its first acquisitions. In 1880 a committee started selecting specimens and many of these were housed in the Ceylon court in the Garden Palace building.
The destruction of the building and its contents in 1882 forced curator Joseph Maiden to send out letters to contributors asking for new items for the museum. The response was remarkably positive and just over a year later, on 15 December 1883, the Technological Museum, with 5000 objects, was opened to the public in the Agricultural building which had survived the previous year's fire. The group of photographs associated with this album provide us with a unique insight into the short lived magnificence of the Garden Palace before it burned to the ground.
Geoff Barker, Curatorial, July 2009
References
Baker, R. T., 'Technological Museum', in the Australian Technical Journal of Science and Art, Vol. 1, No. 2, 30 March, 1897
Commissioners of the Sydney International Exhibition, 'Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition1879', Thomas Richards, Government Printer, Sydney 1881
Davison, G., Webber, K., Yesterday's Tomorrows; the Powerhouse Museum and its Precursors 1880-2005, Powerhouse Publishing in association with the University of New South Wales Press, 2005
P., Proudfoot, R. Maguire, and R. Freestone (eds.), Colonial City Global City, Sydney's International Exhibition 1879, Crossing Press, Sydney, 2000
Commissioners of the Sydney International Exhibition, 'Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition1879', Thomas Richards, Government Printer, Sydney 1880
Richards and Co. were the first to win exclusive rights to photograph the exhibition but Roberts, Richards & Company's work was deemed sub-standard and their contract was ended by early 1880.
The next appointment was another similarly named firm 'Richards & Co.' who are the authors of the photographs in Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition1879, even though some photographs of the inaugural ceremony must have been taken by the earlier company.
In the end the bulk of the photographs were of the 'Garden Palace' building and the exhibits appear to have been produced by 'Roberts and Co.'. Once the exhibition was over controls on the photographing and the Garden Palace and the other buildings became less strict and as a result other photographers began to take their own images of the buildings. These included John Paine and Charles Bayliss.
Geoff Barker, July, 2009
References
Commissioners of the Sydney International Exhibition, 'Official Record of the Sydney International Exhibition1879', Thomas Richards, Government Printer, Sydney 1881
P., Proudfoot, R. Maguire, and R. Freestone (eds.), Colonial City Global City, Sydney's International Exhibition 1879, Crossing Press, Sydney, 2000
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