3-078-245 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Bird's-eye view of the Leeds International Exhibition, 1890. 'The Exhibition...is not artistic or ornamental, but is designed to illustrate the progress of engineering, mining, and manufacturing industries, and of the commerce belonging to them, in which matters few provincial towns have an equal claim to important consideration. Not only the woollen cloth trade, which it shares with Bradford, Huddersfield, Dewsbury, Wakefield, and other places, and that of flax and linen, which is now carried on more largely at Belfast and Dundee, but its ironworks and foundries, engine and machine-factories, collieries, potteries, especially the terracotta and faience works of Burmantofts, tanneries and leather manufactures, glass-making, and other industries, contribute to the prosperity of Leeds,...the centre of a district containing five millions of people, and rivalling Manchester in commercial and social importance. The buildings...are rather of a practical and utilitarian character than ornamental,...with a vast gallery for machinery in motion,...a large concert-hall,...dining-rooms and other refreshment-rooms, and a pleasant enclosed garden, besides the inevitable "switchback railway," and other amusements, with music of bands'. From "Illustrated London News", 1890.