“… catch a fleeting glimpse of what was America’s first World’s Fair, at the Bard Graduate Center Gallery in Manhattan,” writes Sam Roberts in his New York Times feature on the New York Crystal Palace of 1853. The article goes in depth about the history of the exhibition and the impetus in 19th-century New York to visualize the bustling city, and concludes with a quote from Professor Ivan Gaskell:

“At a time when many New Yorkers are troubled by the security costs of a structure dedicated to the vanity of one man,” Professor Ivan Gaskell, head of the Focus Gallery Project at Bard Graduate Center, said, “It seems worth recalling the 1853 Crystal Palace as a building devoted to conspicuous production rather than conspicuous consumption, though this didn’t save it from eventually going up in flames.”