A commercially produced album containing mounted photographs, measuring approximately 280 x 225 mm, and four pages of explanatory text, commemorating the fire which destroyed the exhibition hall on 22nd September 1882. The album consists of one photograph of the undamaged building and 16 of various parts of the ruins. Prints are without captions.

The origins of the building lay in the New South Wales Government's decision in 1878 to hold an International Exhibition in Sydney. In January 1879 the buildings were marked out to the design of the Colonial Architect James Barnet on a plot south of the main part of the Botanic Gardens, and considering the size of the building, were opened to the public an extraordinarily short time later, in September 1879.

The cause of the fire has never been determined, but the spectacular blaze which started at around 6am became almost immediately uncontrollable and by 9am the Hall was utterly destroyed. Almost as important as the loss of the building were the records burned in the fire: all the 1881 census information, of which no copies existed, and which charted the growth of the State since the previous census ten years before, was consumed. Water supply schemes, land deeds and railway surveys, the Geological Collection and Library of the Technological Museum, the Library of the Linnean Society and the Libraries and plans of other bodies were destroyed, although in a few cases copies existed. A large number of works from the Art Society of New South Wales were destroyed, although judging by the newspaper's report, this would seem to be a lesser tragedy.