Tom Thumb’s Miniature Chair
This miniature chair belonged to General Tom Thumb, a little person performer who was discovered in Bridgeport, Connecticut, by P. T. Barnum in 1842. Charlie was just two feet tall and about 15 pounds at age 5. Bright and engaging, he had an aptitude for acting, and crowds thronged to get a glimpse of the Man in Miniature, as Barnum promoted him. This little chair was probably made for use on stage chairs in the same style are shown in popular prints that feature Tom Thumb in his various performance characters.
View The Barnum Museum Collection In The Ct Digital Archive:
The Barnum Museum Digital Collection contains a range of material spanning a timeframe from ancient Egypt to the early 1900s. While the majority of the objects, artwork, and documents pertain to P. T. Barnum and date to the 1800s, the collection also includes anthropological items that belonged to the Bridgeport Scientific Society, the Museums predecessor. Of particular note are images and videos about the mummified remains of an ancient Egyptian woman. This collection will expand to other categories as time and resources allow.
How The Site Was Created: A Story In Two Parts
Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Old York Foundation, and The Graduate Center, CUNY, The Lost Museum was created between 1996 and 2002 by the American Social History Project in collaboration with the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and produced at the New Media Lab at the City University of New York Graduate Center .
And so The Lost Museum was painstakingly born. But digital technology, like Barnum himself, is perpetually giving us ever more sophisticated methods of display. By 2015, it had become painfully apparent that Flash was no longer practical, given the ubiquity of smartphones and tablet devices, and the conventions of web design had transformed as well. All of these changes demanded that we submit the site to some major digital renovations using new web technologies. We have replaced Flash programming with HTML5 and used JavaScript and CSS3 Media Queries to determine a browsers width and adjust the sites size and layout accordingly. We designed three different layouts to fit the range of devices now available. Clickable hotspots now have indicators to make the exploration of the Museum possible on tablets and phones. The vastly increased bandwith now available to internet users allowed us to re-create the site at a much higher resolution and use larger versions of the sites several short movies.
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Sexual Orientation And Gender Identity
The New York metropolitan area is home to about 570,000 self-identifying and people, and one of the world’s largest. were legalized on June 24, 2011 and were authorized to take place on July 23, 2011. Charles Kaiser, author of The Gay Metropolis: The Landmark History of Gay Life in America, wrote that in the era after , “New York City became the literal gay metropolis for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from within and without the United States: the place they chose to learn how to live openly, honestly and without shame.”
The annual traverses southward down and ends at in Lower Manhattan the parade rivals the as the largest pride parade in the world, attracting tens of thousands of participants and millions of sidewalk spectators each June. The annual is held in and is accompanied by the ensuing Multicultural Parade.
American Revolution And The Early United States
Manhattan was at the heart of the , a series of major battles in the early . The was forced to abandon Manhattan after the on November 16, 1776. The city, greatly damaged by the during the campaign, became the British military and political center of operations in North America for the remainder of the war. The military center for the colonists was established in New Jersey. British occupation lasted until November 25, 1783, when returned to Manhattan, as .
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Read A Brief Summary Of This Topic
P.T. Barnum, in full Phineas Taylor Barnum, , American showman who employed sensational forms of presentation and publicity to popularize such amusements as the public museum, the musical concert, and the three-ring circus. In partnership with James A. Bailey, he made the American circus a popular and gigantic spectacle, the so-called Greatest Show on Earth.
Barnum was 15 years old when his father died, and the support of his mother and his five sisters and brothers fell largely upon his shoulders. After holding a variety of jobs, he became publisher of a Danbury, Connecticut, weekly newspaper, Herald of Freedom. Arrested three times for libel, he enjoyed his first taste of notoriety.
In 1829, at age 19, Barnum married a 21-year-old Bethel woman, Charity Hallett, who was to bear him four daughters. In 1834 he moved to New York City, where he found his vocation as a showman one year later when he successfully presented Joice Heth, a wizened Black woman whom he advertised as the 161-year-old nurse to Gen. George Washington. On her death, however, the story was exposed as a hoax.
Riches, Rivals & Radicals: 100 Years of Museums in America
Pt Barnums American Museum Re
On July 13, 1865, in a spectacular fire witnessed by thousands of New Yorkers, P. T. Barnums American Museum in downtown Manhattan mysteriously burned to the ground. The museum will soon re-open its doors to the public this time in virtual form.
Barnums artifacts, oddities, productions, and creatures are now available for exclusive preview at The Lost Museum, a newly redesigned website produced by the Graduate Centers American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning and the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. The site officially opens on July 13, the 150th anniversary of the museums destruction.
From the mysterious FeeJee Mermaid and beautiful Circassian Woman to Confederate president Jefferson Davis in his wifes dress, many revelations and deceptions are again on view, supplemented by a rich archive of historical documents and artifacts.
Visitors also have the option to seek out clues to discover who, among suspects representing social and political figures of the period, may have set the fatal 1865 fire.
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Higher Education And Research
More than 600,000 students are enrolled in New York City’s more than 120 higher education institutions, the highest number of any city in the world, with more than half a million in the system alone as of 2020, including both degree and professional programs. According to , New York City has, on average, the best higher education institutions of any .
Much of the in the city is done in medicine and the . New York City has the most postgraduate life sciences degrees awarded annually in the United States, with 127 having roots in local institutions as of 2005 while in 2012, 43,523 licensed physicians were practicing in New York City. Major biomedical research institutions include , Rockefeller University, , , , and , being joined by the / venture on . The graduates of in the Bronx earned the highest average annual salary of any university graduates in the United States, $144,000 as of 2017.
Captain George Costentenus Poster
This poster-sized print showcases Barnums famous tattooed Greek, Captain George Costentenus, who performed in the Greatest Show on Earth in the 1870s. It was said that the 388 tattoos covering his entire body were a punishment inflicted when he was captured in Kashgar, but in reality he was a self-made curiosity.
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View The Pt Barnum Digital Collection In The Ct Digital Archive:
The P. T. Barnum Digital Collection brings together the P. T. Barnum-related items of the Barnum Museum and the Bridgeport History Center/Bridgeport Public Library, forming one comprehensive research resource. Included are many types of artifacts such as clothing, furniture, carriages, posters, and souvenirs, and archival items such as letters, documents, and photographs.
Finding Barnum On The Internet
Thomas Augst
More than a historical resource, The Lost Museum invites us, then, to ponder the narratives with which we stage authenticity, the material objects and practices with which every generation reimagines the kinship of truth and fiction.
An antebellum museum in cyberspace
On July 13, 1865, one of the most celebrated institutions in the United States, the American Museum, burned to the ground. But thanks to the wonders of technology, it has been rebuiltsort ofon a Website called The Lost Museum, sponsored by the American Social History Project of the CUNY Graduate Center, in collaboration with the Center for History and New Media at George Mason University. As it was managed by Phineas T. Barnum, the original American Museum was located in lower Manhattan and presented an ever-growing collection of wonders across five floors, ranging from cosmoramas and wax figures, to aquariums and live-animal specimens, to moral representations in the Lecture Room.
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What You’ll Find In The Lost Museum
We present this re-creation of P.T. Barnums American Museum as a lens into mid-19th century New York City and antebellum America. The Lost Museum website offers visitors a visualization and spatial interpretation of this extraordinary institution as well as an innovative way to learn and teach about the many issues and events of the period. The heart of the website is the 3-D re-creation of P.T. Barnums American Museum, the pre-eminent cultural institution of 19th century America that was mysteriously destroyed by fire on July 13, 1865. It takes you, the visitor, into the virtual museum where you can roam freely among the four rooms that we have digitally re-created. There are some links between rooms, but you can also use the floor maps that are always available on screen. By moving your mouse or finger left and right, up and down when arrows indicate, you will move around the room. Selecting hot spots allows you to look more closely at some of the vast number of items and exhibits Barnum displayed in his museum.
Early Life And Family
Barnum was born Phineas Taylor Barnum on July 5, 1810, in Bethel, Connecticut. A natural salesman, he was peddling snacks and cherry rum to soldiers by age 12.
Barnum moved to New York City as a young man and tried his hand at a variety of businesses, including newspaper publishing and running a boarding house.
In 1835, Barnum’s knack for promotion surfaced when he paid $1,000 for an elderly slave named Joice Heth. Claiming she was 161 years old and a former nurse for George Washington, Barnum exhibited her throughout the Northeast, raking in an estimated $1,500 per week.
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Barnum Museum Fire: July 13 1865
In the mid 1800s, it was unthinkable to visit New York City without a visit to Barnums American Museum. P.T. Barnums stunning building occupied a prominent corner on Lower Broadway at the corner of Ann Street from 1841 to 1865. Its massive size and impressive appearance was rivaled only by the wonders within, where you could find exhibits that ranged from fossils to sea shells to live exotic animals to living curiosities. Additionally, one could find waxworks depicting historical tableaux, current events, and famous or notorious persons such as the murderess Polly Bodine as well as a luxuriously appointed theatre.
Barnums Museum had something for everyone, and all for the eminently reasonable price of twenty-five cents. It would not have been out of place to see a solidly middle-class woman earnestly learning about conchology in the main hall while a traveling bumpkin gawked at the platform performers in the next room. Though the museum had both admirers and detractors, no one could argue that Barnum offered both genuine objects of learning he had fossils and an exotic animal menagerie years before New York ever had a zoo or a museum of natural history and exhibits that constituted a gateway to the world of the unimaginable, the fanciful, and the bizarre.
Aside from Tom Thumb, Barnums most famous living curiosities were probably Chang and Eng Bunker, the original Siamese Twins:
Heres what the handbills for his exotic and beautiful mermaid promised:
Tom Thumb & Lavinia’s Wedding Cake
Imagine a slice of wedding cake that is more than 150 years old! This souvenir slice in its original box was among hundreds that were given out to guests attending the 1863 wedding reception for Mr. and Mrs. General Tom Thumb . Tradition held that the recipient was to eat the memento slice on the first anniversary. Being a rich, dense cake made with dried fruits well soaked in brandy, the alcohol prevented the cake from going moldy. Although this piece has lost all moisture and is now crystalized, the fact that it survived all these years is amazing!
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Barnum’s American Museum Digitized
The Lost Museum is my favorite museum right now, even though it doesn’t really exist. It’s an amazing Flash-based recreation of PT Barnum’s American Museum, lost to fire in 1865. Barnum’s Museum was a tour-de-force of oddities, curiosities, and humbuggery:
P.T. Barnum’s American Museum, located from 1841 to 1865 at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in lower Manhattan, has been long recognized by historians as a pivotal institution in the development of nineteenth-century urban culture. For a twenty-five cent admission, visitors viewed an ever-revolving series of “attractions,” from the patchwork Fejee Mermaid to the diminutive and articulate Tom Thumb. But the Museum also promoted educational ends, including natural history in its menageries, aquaria, and taxidermy exhibits history in its paintings, wax figures, and memorabilia and temperance reform and Shakespearean dramas in its “Lecture Room” or theater. Foreshadowing trends in American commercial amusement, the Museum was the first institution to combine sensational entertainment and gaudy display with instruction and moral uplift.
The virtual reconstruction contains such gems as a complete scan of an 1850 guidebook to the American Museum, articles from the period about attractions like the FeJee Mermaid, and background on the eccentric characters in Barnum’s living “collection.” Link
Barnum’s First Bridgeport Mansion
This watercolor drawing of Barnums first Bridgeport mansion, Iranistan, is a rare view since no photographs are known to exist. Sadly, the exotic and lavishly decorated structure only lasted a decade it burned to the ground in December of 1857. The landscaped surroundings featured a greenhouse, stables, a carriage house, and a building to pump water to the house, a remarkably early example of indoor plumbing.
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Four Special Trains Poster
Barnums involvement with the circus coincided with the major expansion of the railroad system in America. He capitalized on its many advantages to bring ever-larger shows to more and more Americans. This small but delightfully scenic poster, titled Barnums Greatest Show on Earth Coming by Four Special Trains, dates from about 1875-1876.
Pt Barnums Relationship With Jenny Lind
Although he became famous for championing the weird and wacky, one of Barnum’s most successful ventures came with the promotion of Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind in the early 1850s.
After hearing about Lind’s sold-out concerts in Europe, Barnum made the “Swedish Nightingale” an offer of $1,000 per performance for 150 shows in the United States and Canada. He reportedly hoped to improve his public image as the owner of a dime-store museum. It was risky, since Barnum had never actually heard Lind sing. He launched a public relations blitz, including newspaper coverage and competitions. His bet paid off, earning Barnum a profit of more than $500,000.
Over the years, Lind and Barnum were suspected of having a romantic relationship. In 2017, their supposed romantic relationship made it to the big screen in The Greatest Showman, a movie with Hugh Jackman as Barnum and Rebecca Ferguson as Lind. However reports suggest that Lind and Barnums relationship was all business. In 1852, Lind married pianist and accompanist Otto Goldschmidt, staying together until her death in 1887. Barnum remained focused on his career.
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Who Was Pt Barnum
Born on July 5, 1810, in Bethel, Connecticut, P.T. Barnum became a successful promoter after moving to New York City. From 1841 to 1868, he ran the Barnum American Museum, which featured the “Feejee Mermaid,””General Tom Thumb” and other oddities.
In 1871, he launched the traveling spectacle that would eventually become the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. After an illustrious career, Barnum died in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on April 7, 1891.
Salt And Deep History In The Ohio Country
Annabel LaBrecque
Indeed, early American salt makers exploited productive precedents established by generations of people who had engaged with salt resources for thousands of years. This deeper history of salt shaped space, relations, and power dynamics during the eighteenth century in ways both explicit and obscure.
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An Elaborately Engraved Diploma From This Popular Show In 1862 Signed By Barnum
A search of public sale records going back 40 years fails to turn up another example, nor have we seen one
P.T. Barnum was the greatest showman on earth. He more than any other person created the concept of popular entertainment and developed to a virtual science methods of satisfying the public. In 1841 he opened his American Museum in New York, and it was a major attraction until the end of the Civil War. In addition to the strange and sometimes educational attractions, he offered performances. In 1850, he brought Jenny Lind the famed Swedish Nightingale to America, and she gave 93 large-scale concerts for him.
But the American Museum appealed mainly to a working-class crowd during the 1840s, and by the 1850s Barnum was working aggressively to attract a more respectable middle-class audience, including women, to the Museum. His answer: he instituted his National Baby Show, which proved to be one of the American Museums most popular competitions. The first baby show in June 1855 attracted more than 60,000 patrons eager to view the 143 contestants who were to be judged especially on the crowning merit of their being genuine original American stock. Following up on his success in New York, Barnum quickly staged baby shows in Boston, Albany, Cincinnati, and Baltimore. Barnum advertised that $12,000 was to be given to the Finest Babies, and the show was a hit everywhere.
