Wow! Absolutely gorgeous.
I wonder what the motivation was for such over-the-top decoration? Lots of money sloshing around and a desire to make things beautiful for beauty's sake? Individual or governmental prestige?
I wonder what the motivation was for such over-the-top decoration? Lots of money sloshing around and a desire to make things beautiful for beauty's sake? Individual or governmental prestige?
We invented machines to build large amounts of simple things cheaply, so we designed simpler things.
The Victorians saw engineering prowess as a statement of intent to the world, combine that with this https://benjaminstudebaker.com/2015/12/17/how-austerity-dest... (British empire from 1830 to 1880 accounted for half of global wealth and approx 25% of landmass) and you could do incredible things.
Lots of victorian infrastructure was built/over built so well we still use some of it now (London's sewer system is 2000 kilometers and brick built) - it was often seen as a legacy for the future as well.