Notable debut …

… City of Glass | City Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

What of “the finest building in America” itself? Burrows details the construction problems, the cost overruns (some things never change), the design compromises, and the delays. In the end, the Crystal Palace stood proudly beside the mammoth Croton Distributing Reservoir that half a century later yielded its site to the New York Public Library (itself one of the finest buildings in America). Reservoir Square, site of the Crystal Palace, became Bryant Park. New York had nothing else like the Crystal Palace, a gem of engineering and ornamentation that, if not quite Paxton’s London masterpiece, nonetheless ranked as one of the major American buildings of the era. It’s easy to forget that at this time, New York had no Central Park, no St. Patrick’s Cathedral, no Brooklyn Bridge, and no skyscrapers.