Louisiana Cultural Vistas - Spring 2008 - (Page 63) COURTESY OF MRS. ST. PAUL BOURGOIS III NEE ROSE BEVERLY CHEW BUTLER opposite page, inset: The artifacts assembled for the Fisk Free Library exhibit later formed the nucleus of the Louisiana State Museum’s historical collection. (P. E. Carriere photographer, 1900.) left: Portrait of Joseph Meisson Kennedy attributed to Jean J. Vaudechamp, 1832. Joseph Kennedy and James Robb were among the cities earliest art collectors and lenders to the National Gallery of Paintings. According to a November 1855 article in the Daily Picayune the fire that melted Mr. Vannuchi’s previous inventory allowed him to invest in a “collection of magnificently finished wax statuary, infinitely more attractive than his previous ones … Among the new ones are those of Marshal Pelissier, Omer Pasha, Lord Raglan, Prince Menschikoff, Napoleon I … Those of the Emperor Alexander, Louis Napoleon, and Francis Joseph and of the King of Prussia and Queen Victoria are of course in the collection. In short, there is nothing wanting in it to entitle it to the heartiest patronage of the community …” Owned by Colonel Charley T. Ames, the Crescent City Museum at 40 St. Charles Avenue opposite the St. Charles Hotel (site of the A list of similar “museums” present-day Place St. Charles) offered a includes Donleson's Dime Museum at menagerie of lions, tigers, gorillas, kangaroos, the corner of Esplanade and Decatur white peacocks, a Japanese hog and the streets, Carter & Wells Museum of “wonderful ‘happy family’” of animals. Over a Living Wonders, and the Crescent thousand curiosities in glass cases were available City Dime Museum at Grunwald for visitors to peep at — well worth the price of Hall (“with Mr. Jos. M. Dickson’s admission according to an article of the times. To infantile band”). further entertain the visitor, the museum featured One of the larger and more Chinese juggling and knife throwing as regular comprehensive of the national spectacles. outfits operating in mid-19th At Burnett & Prescott’s Museum and Zoological century New Orleans was the Institute, 93 St. Charles Avenue, visitors watched Spalding and Rogers Circus. Professor Charles Hudson, a Bohemian glass blower, The circus appeared regularly give demonstrations of his art. Besides a variety of birds at the “Amphitheater and with brightly colored plumage, the museum boasted a Museum.” Spalding and talking cockatoo, a “happy family” of opposite-natured Rogers also constructed a animals in one “tenement,” and a huge boa constrictor. boat called the Spalding Snake shows seem to have been very popular at the time. and Rogers Floating Also the popularity of the “dime” or “mammoth” Circus Palace used to museum can be seen in the inclusion of Eugene Robinson’s ferry the circus from Dime Museum in the visitor’s guide to the 1884 World’s town to town. Industrial and Cotton Centennial Exposition. The Dime A number of Museum was located at 126 Canal Street and admission was anatomical museums also just as the name suggests, 10 cents. Robinson’s styled itself a existed, with some of a higher quality than “resort for young ladies and children,” and probably exhibited much more circus than museum. The list of attractions included the living skeleton, the largest lady in the world, the tattooed top right: Vannuchi’s Museum advertisement in Gardner’s Directory, 1861. man, the elastic shouldered man and a “wonderful automaton center: Eugene Robinson’s Mammoth Dime Museum advertisement in the representing the Mechanics’ Dream.” Times Democrat, 1884.
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