The Industry Palace of the 1873 World's Fair: Karl von Hasenauer, John Scott Russell, and New Technology in Nineteenth-Century Vienna

The buildings and landscaped grounds of the nineteenth-century international exhibitions were directly related to the architectural and urban design traditions of the cities in which they were built. At the same time, they possessed idealized qualities that made them innovative and distinct from other contemporary buildings. The result of collaborative planning among architects, engineers, and planning committees, the exhibitions were built to evoke ideal civic settings, their exhibition palaces, pavilions, and gardens forming exemplary complexes that synthesized both invention and tradition. The International Exhibition, the Weltausstellung, held in Vienna, Austria in 1873, was one such event (Fig. 1). Its buildings were both related to the architectural and urbanistic design traditions of nineteenth-century Vienna, and at the same time possessed idealized qualities that were inventive and progressive, marking new technological achievements.