The Machine Hall
Built for the 1889 International Exhibition, Paris, the centenary celebration of the French Revolution (as was the Eiffel Tower) and demolished in 1910.
“Erected and glazed in the space of a year, Contamin’s shed was a huge ‘tent’ of blue and white translucent glass covering a clear space of 800 by 380 feet and held in place by 10-foot-deep, wrought-iron, lattice arches; steel, at that date, still being extremely expensive. Beneath this canopy, mobile platforms running on rails, shuttled some 100,000 people a day above the latest examples of industrial machinery laid out at their feet; a mechanical panorama to be viewed solipsistically, so to speak, from the vantage point of a mobile exhibiting machine.”