Sydney International Exhibition (1879)

Sydney International Exhibition 1879
Garden Palace at the 1879 World's Fair in Sydney
General
Exhibition space	6.1 ha
Number of visitors	1,045. 898
BIE recognition	No
Place of issue
place	Sydney
terrain	Garden Palace , Royal Botanic Gardens Coordinates: 33 ° 51 ′ 52.6 ″  S , 151 ° 12 ′ 46.6 ″  E
calendar
opening	September 17, 1879
closure	April 20, 1880
Chronological order
predecessor	Paris 1878
successor	Melbourne 1880

The 1879 World Exhibition in Sydney ( en: Sydney International Exhibition 1879 ) was the first world exhibition to be held in the southern hemisphere . It has not been officially recognized by the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE). It took place between September 17, 1879 and April 20, 1880.

history

With the discovery of gold in the 1850s, the states of New South Wales and Victoria experienced an enormous economic boom. Sydney and Melbourne saw an exponential population increase.

In 1879 an official application for a world exhibition in Melbourne was submitted to the Parliament of Victoria in Melbourne . Sydney, the oldest city in Australia and the capital of New South Wales, felt ignored and organized its own world exhibition in record time:

The Garden Palace was erected as an exhibition building within 8 months . The construction work was carried out day and night. For this purpose, a system for electric light was imported from England. The building was 244 meters long and had a 66 meters high and 30 meters wide dome.

The Sydney International Exhibition opened in September 1879. The exhibition focused on agriculture and animal husbandry. In historical retrospect, it remained a rather insignificant world exhibition and did not meet the criteria for BIE recognition. The exhibition reached over 1 million visitors and recorded a loss of £ 100,000.

Melbourne decided to hold their world exhibition shortly after the exhibition in Sydney so that foreign exhibitors would not have to make the long journey to Australia twice.

Reuse

The exhibition building was intended to be used for the planned Technological Industrial and Sanitary Museum . The government bought numerous masterpieces from the exhibition of 1879 as the basis for the museum. The building and the collection were destroyed in a fire in 1882 shortly before the museum opened.

Picture gallery

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  Construction of the dome of the Garden Palace

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  Garden Palace at the 1879 World's Fair

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  Garden Palace at the 1879 World's Fair

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  Interior view during the 1879 World's Fair

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  Ruins after the fire of 1882

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  Ruins after the fire of 1882

literature

• Winfried Kretschmer: History of the world exhibitions . Campus, 1999, ISBN 3-593-36273-2 .

Web links

Commons : Sydney International Exhibition (1879)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Sydney International Exhibition 1879 , Powerhouse Museum, accessed March 6, 2014
• Obtained objects from the International Exhibition 1879 in the Powerhouse Museum (English), accessed on March 6, 2014