The Palacio de Cristal del Retiro (“Glass Palace”) was built in A.D. 1887 for the Exposition of the Philippines. Originally, it was intended to be a greenhouse full of tropical plants.
Ricardo Velázquez Bosco had an English example in mind for the design—it’s not as tall or wide as the long-forgotten Crystal Palace in London, but it has some of the same swoops and curves.
It lives on the original site in the Buen Retiro, near the Estanque Grande. Although it’s designed to deconstructed and reconstructed elsewhere, it never was.