Building National Concert Hall Visitors 956000 | Area 17 acres (6.9 ha) | |
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BIE-class Unrecognized exposition Name International Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures Countries 48 (countries, cities and British colonies) | ||
The International Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures was a world's fair held in Dublin in 1865 attended by almost 1 million visitors.
Contents
Site and buildings
In 1862 the Duke of Leinster, Lord Talbot de Malahide and Benjamin Guinness created a Dublin Exhibition Palace and Winter Garden company to establish a Dublin exposition, the first in Dublin since the Great Industrial Exhibition (1853). Guinness supplied the Coburg Gardens, a 15-acre site to the company, which lay between Hatch Street, Harcourt Street and Earlsfort Terrace; and they additionally leased 2 more acres for exhibition grounds.
In 1862 the company called for designs at a cost of 35000 pounds or less. None of the submitted plans came within this cost constraint, but plans from Alfred G Jones were accepted with the proviso that they were revised. In the final design there were three buildings: a brick and stone building, a stone building with iron roof and an iron and glass building, the latter influenced by The Crystal Palace.
The foundations were started in 1863.
The fair
The iron and glass building was stress tested by 600 soldiers marching along the galleries on 31 March 1865 and the exhibition opened by the then Prince of Wales on either 9 May or 8 May, 1865.
The fair attracted 956000 visitors with averages of 5000 day visitors, and 3000 evening visitors
Displays of fine arts, textiles, manufactured goods and raw materials occupied 4781 display cases (2413 British Isles, 2368 foreign countries, cities and colonies).
Aftermath
The building that lay along Earlsfort Terrace and the winter gardens became part of the city's university and later the building became the National Concert Hall with the winter gardens forming the Iveagh Gardens. A rustic grotto and some statues remain in Iveagh Gardens.