International Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures


The International Exhibition of Arts and Manufactures was a world's fair held in Dublin in 1865 attended by almost 1 million visitors.

Site and buildings

Main site

In 1862 the Duke of Leinster, Lord Talbot de Malahide and Benjamin Guinness created a Dublin Exhibition Palace and Winter Garden company to establish a Dublin exposition, the first in Dublin since the Great Industrial Exhibition. Guinness supplied the Coburg Gardens, a 15-acre site to the company, which lay between Hatch Street, Harcourt Street and Earlsfort Terrace; and they additionally leased 2 more acres for exhibition grounds.
In 1862 the company called for designs at a cost of £35,000 or less. None of the submitted plans came within this cost constraint, but plans from Alfred G Jones were accepted with the proviso that they were revised. In the final design there were three buildings: a brick and stone building, a stone building with iron roof and an iron and glass building, the latter influenced by The Crystal Palace.
The foundations were started in 1863.

Auxilllary site

In addition to the main site and gardens; vegetable, seeds, and farm implements were displayed at the Royal Dublin Society buildings in Kildare Street.

The fair

The iron and glass building was stress tested by 600 soldiers marching along the galleries on 31 March 1865 and the exhibition opened by the then Prince of Wales on either 9 May or 8 May, 1865.
The fair attracted 956,000 visitors with averages of 5,000 day visitors, and 3,000 evening visitors
Displays of fine arts, textiles, manufactured goods and raw materials occupied 4,781 display cases .

Aftermath

The building that lay along Earlsfort Terrace and the winter gardens became part of the city's university and later the building became the National Concert Hall with the winter gardens forming the Iveagh Gardens. A rustic grotto and some statues remain in Iveagh Gardens.