<Li> <P> 1851 medal The Crystal Palace in London by Allen & Moore, reverse </P> </Li> <P> 1851 medal The Crystal Palace in London by Allen & Moore, reverse </P> <P> The life of the Great Exhibition was limited to six months, after which something had to be done with the building . Against the wishes of Parliamentary opponents, a consortium of eight businessmen including Samuel Laing and Leo Schuster who were both board members of the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway (LB&SCR), formed a suitable holding company and proposed that the edifice be erected on a property named Penge Place that had been excised from Penge Common at the top of Sydenham Hill . </P> <P> The construction of the building began on Sydenham Hill in 1852 . The new building, while incorporating most of the constructional parts of the Hyde Park building, was so completely different in form as to be properly considered a quite different structure--a' Beaux - arts' form in glass and metal . The main gallery was redesigned and covered with a new barrel - vaulted roof, the central transept was greatly enlarged and made even higher, and two new transepts were added at either end of the main gallery . It was modified and enlarged so much that it extended beyond the boundary of Penge Place, which was also the boundary between Surrey and Kent . The reconstruction was recorded for posterity by Philip Henry Delamotte, and his photographs were widely disseminated in his published works . </P>

What building materials did paxton use to create the crystal palace