PBA Galleries

Tall 24x9" pictorial advertising broadside for P.T. Barnum's American Museum in New York, printed on both sides (one side with a wood engraving showing two "living giraffes" with two trainers).

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 twenty-five cents, visitors viewed an ever-revolving series of "attractions," from the patchwork Fejee Mermaid to the diminutive and articulate Tom Thumb. A spectacular fire destroyed Barnum's Museum on July 13, 1865. Barnum attempted to quickly re-open at another location, but it too burned down in 1868. After that second fire, Barnum turned to the traveling circus business, which still runs to this day. This broadside advertises: "Performances Afternoon and Evening, Something New Every Day and Night; Choice Family Entertainments!; Immense Collection of Curiosities from all parts of the world; Just Opened...Wax Statuary!...Boa Constrictor or, Prince of Serpents...Last Time...French Moral Drama...Old Chateau...Will be published early in December by J.S. Redfield...The Life of P.T. Barnum, written by Himself...[and] Barnum's Travelling Menagerie at Auction...".