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In the course of our daily reporting, we often uncover unusual projects, places, or connections that don't make the final cut. Instead of keeping it to ourselves, we're pleased to share our weekly Architrivia.
Following the relocation of the Crystal Palace in 1852, the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, or Dinosaur Court, were created over the course of two years by designer and sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins. The world's first dinosaur sculpture park opened to the public in 1854, predating the publication of Darwin's On the Origin of the Species (1859) by five years. Dinosaur Court was a public sensation upon its debut, with early full-scale representations of dinosaurs and pre-historic mammals that were the first of their kind anywhere in the world.
Covering a broad range 15 different genera of extinct dinosaurs and pre-historic mammals, from the Paleozoic to the Mesozoic and on to the Stone Age, including a mix of real and imagined creatures based upon early Victorian understandings of evolutionary science and a patchwork of incomplete fossil evidence, the permanent residents of Dinosaur Court are in many ways a product of the times.
Based largely upon early paleontological knowledge of dinosaurs and pre-historic mammals, in which most ancient creatures were more or less understood to be larger-than-life versions of existing reptiles and mammals, albeit with a few fanciful additions and exceptions where the fossil record proved otherwise, Hawkins' creations were as faithful to science as could be expected given the age in which the artist lived.
Before long, the creatures of Dinosaur Court had become a fixture of the local landscape, and a staple of British popular culture, featuring in literary works by Charles Dickens, H. G. Wells, and numerous others over the course of the next 160 years. Viewed below, the Dinosaur Court "Megalosaurus" model, which in reality was a bipedal carnivore more similar in appearance to Tyrannosaurus Rex, made a cameo in am 1853 Dickens' novel, its honourable mention recorded to be the first instance of a "dinosaur" appearing by name in a work of popular fiction.
While Dinosaur Court remained a popular local attraction for many years, by the turn of the last century advances in paleontology had rendered many of its fanciful models hopelessly out of date, their lizard-like appearance no longer accepted by either the scientific community or broader public as an accurate representation of dinosaurs. Adding to their diminished popularity, the statues themselves, made largely out of concrete, lead, and iron, did not age particularly well, and many of the statues had fallen into drastic states of disrepair by the early 1950s.
In 1952, the first wave of restorations took place, with several details salvaged and re-cast, and the overall arrangement and distribution of the creatures of Dinosaur Court altered at this time. In 1973, the models were protected by a classification as Grade II listed buildings, then the entire collection was restored once again in 2002, and upgraded to a Grade I listing in 2007.
Today, Dinosaur Court remains as a testament to Pre-Darwinian thought on the topic of dinosaurs and ancient mammals, as the Victorian-Era public attraction was once the cutting edge of scientific understanding of Earth's prehistoric past. A favourite for photographers and urban explorers, Dinosaur Court, located within Crystal Palace Park in south London, is easily accessible by transit and a splendid place to visit on a rare sunny day in London.
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