Object of the Day: A Stereograph Depicting the Palace of Westminster

Here we see another stereograph from my growing collection of antique ephemera.  Produced by the Keystone View Company, the off-set images are meant to be viewed with a hand-held stereo viewer or "stereoscope".

The front of the stiff cardboard slide is marked:

Keystone View Company Copyrighted H.C. White Co.
Manufacturers.      Made in U.S.A.        Publishers

Meadville, Pa.,  New York, NY. 
Chicago, Ill., London, England


W25414 T Houses of Parliament and Towers of Westminster Abbey, W. across Thames, London, England.


On the reverse, we see:

HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT AND TOWERS OF WESTMINSTER ABBEY, LONDON

     The legislative halls of an empire upon which the sun never sets rise impressively before us.  Extending 940 feet along the Thames, the Houses of Parliament, comprising the House of Lords and the House of Commons, are of surpassing beauty and size, covering nearly eight acres.  These buildings contain eleven courts, 100 staircases and 1100 apartments.  They were begun in 1840 and finished in 1859, at a total cost little short of $15,000,000.  The government officials, secretaries, and employees frequenting the buildings make up a great army in addition to the actual members of the two Houses, and this enormous pile, vast as it is, provides no more than appropriate housing for the conduct of national houses. 
     On the left, Victoria Rower, seventy feet square, uplifts it's pinnacles to an altitude of 340 feet.  The spire seen in the center of the building is known as the Middle Tower.  The Clock Tower, in the distance on the right, has a height of 318 feet.  Its four dials are each twenty-three feet in diameter, their circumference being circled every hour by minute hands twelve feet in length.  This os the tower in which "Big Ben" is hung, a ponderous bell weighing thirteen tons, whose deep-toned voice can be heard eight miles away.
     The twin towers that we see beyond the Victoria Tower, at the extreme left, are those of Westminster Abbey.  To the extreme right, beyond the Houses of Parliament, the Victoria Embankment begins, there also is located the new "Scotland Yard," London's famousmpolice headquarters.

Copyright by the Keystone View Company