Toronto Star

It took the strength of iron to create one of architecture's most delicate-looking structures, the 19th-century glass buildings known as crystal palaces or glasshouses. The first iron-and-glass conservatory in Toronto was built in 1858, seven years after the great Crystal Palace went up in London's Hyde Park. Iron permitted the construction of skeletal frames that could be literally filled all around with several panes of glass. Glasshouses, as they were sometimes named, were built in all sizes and for a variety of uses. By 1878, Toronto's Crystal Palace was dismantled, moved, enlarged and re-erected on what is now the Exhibition Place.