1. History

2. Attractions

3. See also

4. References

5. External links

History

In 1841 Barnum bought Scudder's American Museum across from St. Paul's at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street. He converted the five-story exterior into an advertisement lit with limelight. The museum opened on January 1, 1842.^[1] Its attractions made it a combination zoo, museum, lecture hall, wax museum, theater and freak show, in what was, at the same time, a central site in the development of American popular culture. Barnum filled the American Museum with dioramas, panoramas, "cosmoramas", scientific instruments, modern appliances, a flea circus, a loom powered by a dog, the trunk of a tree under which Jesus’ disciples sat, an oyster bar, a rifle range, waxworks, glass blowers, taxidermists, phrenologists, pretty baby contests, Ned the learned seal, the Feejee Mermaid (a mummified monkey's torso with a fish's tail), midgets, Chang and Eng the Siamese twins, a menagerie of exotic animals that included beluga whales in an aquarium, giants, Native Americans who performed traditional songs and dances, Grizzly Adams's trained bears and performances ranging from magicians, ventriloquists and blackface minstrels to adaptations of biblical tales and Uncle Tom's Cabin.{{citation needed|date=May 2016}}

At its peak, the museum was open fifteen hours a day and had as many as 15,000 visitors a day.^[2] Some 38 million customers paid the 25 cents admission to visit the museum between 1841 and 1865. The total population of the United States in 1860 was under 32 million.

In November 1864 the Confederate Army of Manhattan attempted and failed to burn down the museum, but on July 13, 1865 the American Museum burned to the ground in one of the most spectacular fires New York has ever seen.^[3] Animals at the museum were seen jumping from the burning building, only to be shot by police. Many of the animals unable to escape the blaze burned to death in their enclosures, including the two beluga whales who boiled to death in their tanks. It was allegedly during this fire that a fireman by the name of Johnny Denham killed an escaped tiger with his ax before rushing into the burning building and carrying out a 400-pound woman on his shoulders. Barnum's New Museum opened September 6, 1865, at 539-41 Broadway, but that also burned down, on March 3, 1868.^[4] It was after this that Barnum moved on to politics and the circus industry.^[5] Barnum's American Museum was one of the most popular attractions of its time.^[6]

The site at Ann Street was then used for a new building for the New York Herald newspaper.^[7]

In July 2000 a virtual museum version opened on the Internet, supported by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Attractions

The museum's collection included items collected throughout the world over a period of 25 years.^[8] The museum offered many attractions which grew to great fame. One of the most famous was General Tom Thumb a 25-inch tall dwarf who eventually garnered so much fame and success that Queen Victoria saw his performances twice and Abraham Lincoln personally congratulated Thumb on his wedding. Thumb wasn't the only physical oddity there; there was also the Fiji Mermaid and Josephine Boisdechene, who had a large beard, which had grown to the length of two inches when she was only eight years old. As if to supplement Tom Thumb, another famous attraction of the museum was William Henry Johnson, who was one of Barnum's longest-running attractions.

Another one of the famous attractions at the museum were Chang and Eng, Siamese twins who were extremely argumentative, both with each other and Barnum himself.

The museum also boasted an elegant theatre, called the "Lecture Room," and characterized in the popular Gleason's Pictorial Drawing-Room Companion of 1853, "one of the most elegant and recherche halls of its class to be found anywhere," which would offer "every species of entertainment" "'from grave to gay, from lively to severe,' and "judiciously purged of every semblance of immorality."^[9]

At one point, Barnum noticed that people were lingering too long at his exhibits. He posted signs indicating "This Way to the Egress". Not knowing that "Egress" was another word for "Exit", people followed the signs to what they assumed was a fascinating exhibit — and ended up outside.^[10]

The five-storey building also served great educational value. Aside from the different attractions, the Museum also promoted educational ends, including natural history in its menageries, aquarium (which featured a large white whale), and taxidermy exhibits; history in its paintings, wax figures, and memorabilia; and temperance reform and Shakespearean dramas in the above described "Lecture Room" or theater.^[3] It was also the first museum to put human oddities on display as an organized freak show.{{Citation needed|reason=Reliable source needed for the whole sentence|date=March 2019}} It was the American Museum that began the modern-day trend of exploiting the human body for the sake of mass entertainment.{{Citation needed|reason=Reliable source needed for the whole sentence|date=March 2019}}

See also

• Barnum Museum – completed in 1893 in Bridgeport, Connecticut

• Sideshow

• Dime museum

References

External links

• The Lost Museum – Online version of the museum, published in the year 2000.
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20160417195601/http://www.barnum-museum.org/manmythlegend.htm Barnum Museum Homepage] - Homepage of the Barnum Museum Website
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20160528103929/http://gothamist.com/2012/06/21/vintage_oddities_the_bizarre_and_fa.php Gothamist.com] - Details Barnum's most famous attractions
• Priceonomics.com - The American Museum's ties to the modern freak show

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