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Dime Museums & Sideshows - A Brief History
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.
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. 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.
Throughout the last days of the 19th Century
and bulk of the 20th, carnivals roamed the
American countryside as the circuses - the competition
to the carnivals - had roamed the land since the late
1700s. In the days up to World War II, the carnivals were
mostly shows - called the back end as that was the location
of the shows on the typical carnival lot - with a ride
or two thrown in among the concessions and games. The
carnival shows grew from several traditions:
- The dime museums made famous by Barnum and the Peale
family, with their fame in exhibiting the "wonders
of nature, the works of man".
- The traveling circuses, which showed that mobile entertainment
could tap the resources of the exploding of population
of a growing America.
- The world's fairs, particularly the Columbian Exposition
of 1893 in Chicago, where the grand Midway Plaisance and
its multitude of amusements is credited with demonstrating
to showmen that a gathering of their kind could make big
money.
Even after the Second World War, when the writing was on
the wall for the decline of the shows, there were still
grand and glorious days for the back end, and there were
still classic shows on the road into the '60s and early
'70s.
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