Volunteer Park Conservatory

Building the Future (Part 2 of 3). The Tectonic Heritage of the Volunteer Park Conservatory.

Without the convenience of modern sealants, glass house pioneers used the overlap of the glass provided by their shingling to keep out water, with the bottom edge scalloped to ensure the water droplets fell from one piece of glass to another as they cascaded down the glass skin.

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Volunteer Park Conservatory, Building the Future (Part 1 of 3)

Appearing in England towards the end of the Industrial Revolution (in the second quarter of the 19th Century), greenhouses were well poised to become an architectural representative of the Victorian Age’s zeitgeist; for greenhouses were not only the material manifestations of the revolution (beginning prior to Queen Victoria’s reign) in their use of iron and glass, but also reflective of the revolutions in the fields of science, economics, including the social mobility of the newly emerging middle class all creating demands for new types of urban and architectural spaces in which to spend the leisure time resulting from industrialization and its resulting new prosperity.

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