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Location: Albertopolis, City of London, London, England, United Kingdom. (51°29′53″N 0°10′36″W).
Albertopolis
Albertopolis is the area centred on Exhibition Road in London, England, containing a large number of educational and cultural sites. It is in South Kensington, split between the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the City of Westminster, bordered by Cromwell Road to the south and Kensington Road to the north.
History of Albertopolis:
Following the advice of Prince Albert the area was purchased by the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 with the profits made from the Great Exhibition of 1851, which was held in a site in Hyde Park nearby to the north-east. This is commemorated in the name of the principal north-south street laid out on their estate, Exhibition Road.
Prince Albert was a driving force behind the Great Exhibition and President of the Royal Commission, and the name "Albertopolis" seems to have been coined in the 1850s to celebrate and somewhat satirise his role in Victorian cultural life. After his death the term fell into disuse, and the area was more widely referred to as South Kensington. It was revived by architectural historians in the 1960s and popularised by the nascent conservation movement to bring attention to the complex of public Victorian buildings and the surrounding houses built on the Commissioners' estate, that were threatened with demolition by the expansion and redevelopment plans of Imperial College. Among the buildings threatened was the Imperial Institute, designed by T. E. Collcutt.
