Barnum's American Museum

Now, who hears a circus organ? In the 1840s, an enterprising young showman named Phineas T.

Barnum purchased some of the more famous cabinets of curiosity from Europe and started Barnum's American Museum in New York City.

a spectacular hodgepodge of zoo, lecture hall, wax museum, theater, and freak show that was known for its eclectic residents, such as bears, elephants, acrobats, giants, Siamese twins, a Fiji mermaid, and a bearded lady, along with a host of modern machinery and scientific instruments.

Museums open to the public are a relatively new phenomenon.

For instance, it is here in this building that the New York Historical Society was formed.

We also have Scudder's American Museum, which was, of course, the root collection of Barnum's American Museum.

Hold on.

Hold

This was a way back in 1855 when San Francisco, it may be said, was only six years old.

It seemed a supreme condescension on the part of our maternal grandfather that he who did not and could not for a moment countenance the theater should voluntarily take us one and all to see an alleged dramatic representation at Barnum's Museum, at that time one of the features of New York City, and perhaps the most famous place of amusement in the land.

Four years later, when I was sixteen, very far from home and under that good gentleman's watchful supervision, I asked leave to witness a dramatic version of Uncle Tom's Cabin, enacted by a small company of strolling players in a canvas tent.

There were no bloodhounds in the cast and a mighty little scenery or anything else alluring, but I was led to believe that I had been trembling upon the verge of something direful, and I was not allowed to go.