Crystal Palace. On 29 May, Wyld held a preview for the press and invited guests, and on 2 June 1851, one month after the Great Exhibition started, the Great Globe was ready to open its doors to the public. Abraham's design, although described as having "no pretension", did not meet with universal approval: for some who remembered Leicester Square as the home of artists Hogarth and Reynolds, the "bastard Byzantine architecture" was "hideous" and out of place. The residents of the square were less than pleased with the brick building as Wyld had led them to believe the globe would be housed in a Crystal Palace-like construction of glass and ironwork. The project had cost substantially more than Wyld's budget. In the cases of Miller v Wyld and Abraham v Wyld, he claimed to have set aside £2,000 for the building work, but the estimated final cost was about £5,500, and would have run closer to £13,000 if Wyld had not cancelled the proposed outlying buildings. Abraham opined that Wyld's constant suggestions for (mostly impractical) alterations to the design added to both the cost and duration of the building works. In Household Words, Henry Morley estimated that the cost of producing the model was £20,000 rather than the £13,000 Wyld had quoted to the residents' meeting, or the £4,000 to £5,000 originally estimated. The Great Globe The building, which was reminiscent of the Coliseum in Regent's Park, was entered through the newly laid out gardens via one of four loggias facing north (the main entrance), south, east and west, which opened into a large vestibule paved with "patent lava" and from there through turnstiles into Jermyn's circular corridor. This corridor was hung with examples of Wyld's maps and there were examples of his guides and globes on display tables. The corridor was decorated with blue arabesques and lit by globe-shaped lamps with crimson tassels hung from ornate beams. The internal pillars were painted in a rich brown and decorated with copies of Moorish architectural designs from the Alhambra in Granada. The inner wall of this corridor was comprised in part by the rendered exterior surface of the Globe itself; the portion visible from within the corridor was painted blue with the positions of the stars in the night sky picked out in silver. The value of the star map as an educational tool was diminished as only a little of