Dime Museums
See also Anatomical Museums  

For as long as humanity has existed, there has been the desire to collect, especially to collect the strange, the unusual, the bizarre and the exotic. This drive led to the Cabinets of Wonder--collections of exotic objects gathered by wealthy and often eccentric Europeans prior to the 19th Century. These personal collections were the spiritual ancestors of the ultimate collections: the Dime Museums. Dime Museums showcased live human entertainment as well, and in their later phases (1910's-1950's) transformed themselves into sideshows set up in temporary store-fronts in many downtown areas of America.

Though simply called Museums in their early form, the idea of a collection of objects which the public would pay to see spread quickly in early 19th Century America. And by the mid-1800s, the idea had become so popular with the American public that entrepreneurial geniuses like P. T. Barnum became millionaires through the exhibition of vast collections of man-made and natural curiosities.
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above, Matchbook cover from Hubert's Museum, circa 1940's.
Dime Museums, Anatomical Museums.

Photo from typical 1920's itinerant dime museum set up in Atlanta storefront. Of two men sitting center of photo, the one on right is Carl Lauther who presumable owned this show.

Eventually, capitalizing on the public's need for entertainment of all types, museums came to house not only unique collections of objects; they also housed the first family-oriented performance spaces, menageries, and, in fact, nearly every type of entertainment available in 19th Century America. And all for only one dime.

Almost as old a form was the Anatomical Museum-- ostensibly learning exhibits for physicians and scientists-- they typically contained wax models, and specimens in jars, ultimately catering to the morbidly curious generally public, or those looking for symptomatic cures for their own undiagnosed diseases. The Anatomical Museum generally excluded women and children and often became storefronts for doctors selling cures for venereal diseases and other ailments.
List of Places Venues:

Barnum's American Museum, NYC (1841-1868)
American Dime Museum, Baltimore (1999-present)
Wood's Museum, Philadelphia
Hubert's Museum, NYC (1920-1965)
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19th Century Dime Museums [asd]
Boston:
Austin and Stome's Museum
B.F. Keith's Museum
Boston Eden Musée
Boston Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts (referred to as the Boston Museum)
Gaiety Museum
Grand Museum
Keith and Batcheldor's Mammoth Museum (changed to the Gaiety Hall and Museum)
New York Dime Museum
Chicago:
Arthur Putney's Museum
Chicago Eden Musée
Clark Street Museum
Colonel Wood's Museum
Congress Museum
Epstein's Museum
Globe Museum
Libby Prison Museum
London Dime Museum
Olympic Museum
West Side Museum
Whit John's Museum
Wonderland Compound
New York:
Alexander's Museum
Apollo Museum
Barnum and Van Amburgh Museum
Banyard's Museum
Berlin Academy of Waxworks
Broadway Museum and Menagerie
Bunnell's New American Museum (Bunnell's Museum)
Chatham Square Museum
Doris's Eight Avenue Museum
Doris's Harlem Museum
Dr. Kahn's Museum of Anatomy
Eden Musée
Egyptian Museum
European Museum
Gaiety Museum
George Wood's Museum and Metropolitan Theatre
(changed to Wood's Museum and Menagerie but referred to as Wood's Museum)
Globe Dime Museum
Gothic Museum
etc.

Philadelphia:
Olympia Museum
etc.

References for this page:

[d] doghouse collection

[rj] Ricky Jay

Multi-talented, appears in more than one category.

•Full article needed and/or forthcoming.

Rubber stamp above appeared on the back of postcards sold as pitchcards by performers, circa 1910.

 

 
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Last update: 1/10/04