The Boston Museum also called the Boston Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts, was a theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

, wax museum

Wax museum

A wax museum or waxworks consists of a collection of wax sculptures representing famous people from history and contemporary personalities exhibited in lifelike poses....

, natural history museum, zoo

Zoo

A zoological garden, zoological park, menagerie, or zoo is a facility in which animals are confined within enclosures, displayed to the public, and in which they may also be bred....

, and art museum in 19th-century Boston

Boston

Boston is the capital of and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States. The largest city in New England, Boston is regarded as the unofficial "Capital of New England" for its economic and cultural impact on the entire New England region. The city proper had...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

. Moses Kimball

Moses Kimball

Moses Kimball was a U.S. politician and showman. Kimball was a close associate of P. T. Barnum, and public-spirited citizen of Boston, Massachusetts.-Biography:...

 established the enterprise in 1841.

History

The Boston Museum exhibited items acquired from Ethan Allen Greenwood

Ethan Allen Greenwood

Ethan Allen Greenwood was a lawyer, portrait painter, and entrepreneurial museum proprietor in Boston, Massachusetts in the early 19th century. He established the New England Museum in 1818.-Biography:...

's former New England Museum

New-England Museum (Boston)

The New-England Museum in Boston, Massachusetts was established at 76 Court Street by Ethan A. Greenwood, Peter B. Bazin, John Dwight and Samuel Jackson. It featured displays of fine art, natural history specimens, wax figures, and other curiosities...

; tableaux of wax figures; live animals; and artworks by John Singleton Copley

John Singleton Copley

John Singleton Copley was an American painter, born presumably in Boston, Massachusetts, and a son of Richard and Mary Singleton Copley, both Irish. He is famous for his portrait paintings of important figures in colonial New England, depicting in particular middle-class subjects...

, Gilbert Stuart

Gilbert Stuart

Gilbert Charles Stuart was an American painter from Rhode Island.Gilbert Stuart is widely considered to be one of America's foremost portraitists...

, Benjamin West

Benjamin West

Benjamin West, RA was an Anglo-American painter of historical scenes around and after the time of the American War of Independence...

, Thomas Badger

Thomas Badger

Thomas Badger was an artist in Boston, Massachusetts in the 19th-century. He specialized in portraits.-Biography:Thomas Badger trained with John Ritto Penniman.Portrait subjects included:* John Abbot* William Allen, of Bowdoin College...

 and others. Early live shows presented, for instance, "the musical olio, consisting of solos on glass bells, and birch-bark whistling." Theatrical performances began in 1843. Through the years, notable performers included: Lawrence Barrett

Lawrence Barrett

Lawrence Barrett was an American stage actor.-Biography:He was born Lawrence Brannigan to Irish emigrant parents in Paterson, New Jersey. He made his first stage appearance at Detroit as Murad in The French Spy in 1853...

, Edwin Booth

Edwin Booth

Edwin Thomas Booth was a famous 19th century American actor who toured throughout America and the major capitals of Europe, performing Shakespearean plays. In 1869 he founded Booth's Theatre in New York, a spectacular theatre that was quite modern for its time...

, John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth

John Wilkes Booth was an American stage actor who assassinated President Abraham Lincoln at Ford's Theatre, in Washington, D.C., on April 14, 1865. Booth was a member of the prominent 19th century Booth theatrical family from Maryland and, by the 1860s, was a well-known actor...

, Annie Clark, Richard Mansfield

Richard Mansfield

Richard Mansfield was an English actor-manager best known for his performances in Shakespeare plays, Gilbert and Sullivan operas and for his portrayal of the dual title roles in Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde....

, E.H. Sothern, Mary Ann Vincent

Mary Ann Vincent

Mary Ann Vincent was a British born American actress.-Biography:Although English born, she was the daughter of an Irishman named Farlin; left an orphan at an early age, she turned to the stage, making her first appearance in 1834 as Lucy in The Review, at Cowes, Isle of Wight. The next year she...

, and William Warren

William Warren (actor)

William Warren was an American actor, for many years connected with the old Boston Museum.He was born in Philadelphia and educated at the Franklin Institute in that city...

.
An advertisement of 1850 described the museum's key attractions:

"The museum is the largest, most valuable, and best arranged in the United States. It comprises no less than seven different museums, to which has been added the present year, besides the constant daily accumulation of articles, one half of the celebrated Peale's

Charles Willson Peale

Charles Willson Peale was an American painter, soldier and naturalist. He is best remembered for his portrait paintings of leading figures of the American Revolution, as well as establishing one of the first museums....

 Philadelphia Museum, swelling the already immense collection to upwards of half a million articles, the greatest amount of objects of interest to be found together at any one place in America; and an entirely new hall of wax statuary.... and the immense collection of birds, beasts, fish, insects and reptiles;... paintings, engravings and statuary; ... Egyptian mummies, ... family of Peruvian mummies; the duck-billed platypus;... the curious half-fish, half-human Fejee Mermaid

Fiji mermaid

The Fiji mermaid was an object comprising the torso and head of a juvenile monkey sewn to the back half of a fish, covered in papier-mâché...

;... elephants and ourang-outangs..."

The Museum held a recruiting office for Company D. of the 22nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry in 1861 at the start of the Civil War.

Architecture

Hammatt Billings

Hammatt Billings

Charles Howland Hammatt Billings was an artist and architect from Boston, Massachusetts.Among his works are the original illustrations for Uncle Tom's Cabin ,...

 designed the original museum building, located at 18 Tremont Street

Tremont Street

Tremont Street is a major thoroughfare in Boston, Massachusetts.-Etymology:The name is a variation of one of the original appellations of the city, "Trimountaine," a reference to a hill that formerly had three peaks. Beacon Hill, with its single peak, is all that remains of the Trimountain...

; In 1846 Hammatt and J.E. Billings also designed the museum's next building, at 28 Tremont Street, located next door to the Massachusetts Historical Society

Massachusetts Historical Society

The Massachusetts Historical Society is a major historical archive specializing in early American, Massachusetts, and New England history...

, and close to the King's Chapel Burying Ground

King's Chapel Burying Ground

King's Chapel Burying Ground is a historic cemetery at King's Chapel on Tremont Street in Boston, Massachusetts. It is the oldest cemetery in the city and is a site on the Freedom Trail....

. The interior of the museum's 1846 building featured decoration by Ignaz Gaugengigl.

[The building] is arranged in two main portions with an area between for light and air, one communicating with the other at either end by a wide passage. The building upon Tremont Street, the front of which is of Granite in a chaste and beautiful style of Venetian Architecture, with three spacious balconies running the entire length of the building, contains on the first story, five commodious stores, and the entrance to the Museum. Above this story, the whole front building to the eaves, three stories, is occupied as a grand Corinthian Hall... containing the collection. The galleries... are supported by twenty stately columns rising from the floor.... A spacious staircase and passage-way leads to the Exhibition Hall in the rear building... capable of accommodating nearly two thousand persons."

Selected Shows

• The Drunkard
  The Drunkard
  The Drunkard; or, The Fallen Saved is an American temperance play first performed in 1844. A drama in five acts, it was perhaps the most popular play produced in the United States before the dramatization of Uncle Tom's Cabin  in the 1850s. In New York City, P.T. Barnum presented it at his...
  
   (1844)
• Aladdin (1846)
• Sweethearts (1847)
• The Forty Thieves and the Fairy of the Lake, by Michael Kelley (1849)
• King Richard III
  Richard III (play)
  Richard III is a history play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in approximately 1591. It depicts the Machiavellian rise to power and subsequent short reign of Richard III of England. The play is grouped among the histories in the First Folio and is most often classified...
  
   (1849)
• Children of Cyprus (1851)
• Nature's Nobleman (1851)
• The Seven Castles (1851)
• The Enchanted Harp (1852)
• The Silver Spoon, by Joseph Stevens Jones
  Joseph Stevens Jones
  Joseph Stevens Jones was a Boston actor, playwright and theater manager....
  
   (1852)
• Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852)

• The Jewess (1853)
• The Talisman or, The Fairy's Favor (1853)
• Hard Times (1854)
• Peter Wilkins Or—The Flying Islanders (1854)
• The Forty Thieves (1856)
• Neighbor Jackwood (1857)
• The Sea of Ice (1857)
• Bluebeard (1860)
• Buckstone's Married Life (1861)
• Dion Boucicault
  Dion Boucicault
  Dionysius Lardner Boursiquot , commonly known as Dion Boucicault, was an Irish actor and playwright famed for his melodramas. By the later part of the 19th century, Boucicault had become known on both sides of the Atlantic as one of the most successful actor-playwright-managers then in the...
  
  's The Octaroon (1861)
• My Lord and my Lady (1861)
• Tom Taylor
  Tom Taylor
  Tom Taylor was an English dramatist, critic, biographer, public servant, and editor of Punch magazine...
  
  's Babes in the Wood (1861)

• Uncle Robert (1861)
• Lady of Lyons, by Edward Lytton Bulwer
  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton
  Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton PC , was an English politician, poet, playwright, and novelist. He was immensely popular with the reading public and wrote a stream of bestselling dime-novels which earned him a considerable fortune...
  
   (1862)
• The Apostate (1863)
• Romeo and Juliet (1864)
• H.M.S. Pinafore
  H.M.S. Pinafore
  H.M.S. Pinafore; or, The Lass That Loved a Sailor is a comic opera in two acts, with music by Arthur Sullivan and a libretto by W. S. Gilbert. It opened at the Opera Comique in London, England, on 25 May 1878 and ran for 571 performances, which was the second-longest run of any musical...
  
   (1878)
• Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1887)
• Agatha, by Isaac Henderson
  Isaac Henderson
  Isaac Austin Henderson was an American newspaperman and writer.-Life:After an early education in private schools and under tutors, he graduated from Williams College with the degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts, and Doctor of Civil Law...
  
   (1892)
• The Shanghraun (1892)
• Hours with Dickens (1892)
• The Prodigal Father (1893)
• Tobasco (ca.1894)
• The Widow Jones (ca.1895)
• Mrs. Dane's Defense
  Mrs Dane's Defence
  Mrs. Dane's Defence is a society play in four acts by the British playwright Henry Arthur Jones.-First Performance:...
  
   (1903)

Selected Performers

• Mr. & Mrs. J.W. Wallack, Jr (1850)
• Horn, Wells, and Briggs' Ethiopian Serenaders (1851)
• Mad. Radinski (1851)
• Mr. C.D. Pitt. (1851)
• Mrs. Barrett (1851)
• Annetta Galletti (1852)
• Henry Sedley (1852)
• Julia Bennett (1852)
• Caroline Richings and Mr. Peter Richings (1853)
• Lysander Thompson (1853)
• Miss Eliza Logan (1853)
• Agnes Robertson (1854)
• Annette Ince (1854)
• Miss E. Raymond (1854)

• Louisa Howard and Mr. H. Farren (1855)
• Mr. Geo. Jamison (1855)
• Mrs. Annie Senter (1855)
• E.F. Keach (1856)
• James Bennett (1856)
• Mrs Farren (1856)
• Annie Senter (1857)
• Mr & Mrs E.L. Davenport (1857)
• Mr. J.W. Wallack, Jr. (1857)
• Mrs. W.C. Gladstane (1857)
• Mrs. D.P. Bowers (1857)
• Mr. L.P. Barrett (1858)
• Virginia Cunningham (1858)
• Cooper Opera Troupe (1860)

• H.C. Cooper. (1860)
• Kate Reignolds (1860)
• Miss Joey Gougenheim (1860)
• Charles Dillon (1861)
• Emma Waller (1861)
• Mr. C.W. Couldock (1861)
• Mr. Sothern (1861)
• Charlotte Thompson (1862)
• Edwin Adams (1862)
• Fox's Ravel Troupe (1862)
• Matilda Heron
  Matilda Heron
  Matilda Agnes Heron was a popular mid-19th century actress in the United States, best known for her role in the play "Camille."Born in Ireland in 1830, Heron emigrated to the United States in 1842, and lived in Philadelphia. Starting in 1851 she began appearing professionally in plays. In 1853...
  
  (1862)
• Miss Bateman (1862)
• J. Wilkes Booth (1863)
• Walter Montgomery (1871)

Further reading

• Boston Museum. Boston Evening Transcript, Sept. 2, 1843.
• Rhyming catalogue of the rare, curious and valuable collection of curiosities, and works of art; in the Boston Museum. Boston Museum, 1848.
• Tom Pop's First Visit to the Boston Museum. Boston : Printed for the Publisher, 1848.
• Catalogue of the paintings, portraits, marble and plaster statuary, engravings and water color drawings: in the collection of the Boston Museum, together with a descriptive sketch of the institution, and general summary of the natural history specimens, curiosities, etc. Boston: Marden, 1849.
• Boston Museum. Boston Evening Transcript, May 29, 1850.
• Boston Sights and Strangers' Guide. 1856.
• King's Dictionary of Boston. 1883.
• The oldest theatre now in Boston. The Bostonian. Nov. 1894.
• Clapp. "The great dramatic quinquennium and The Boston Museum." Reminiscences of a dramatic critic. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1902. Google books
• Howard Ticknor. The Passing of the Boston Museum. The New England Magazine 26. June 1903.
• Claire McGlinchee. The first decade of the Boston Museum. Boston, B. Humphries, 1940.
• Mammen, Edward William, The Old Stock Company School of Acting; a Study of the Boston Museum. Boston, Mass. : Trustees of the Public Library, 1945.
• Weldon B. Durham, ed. American theatre companies 1749-1887. Greenwood, 1986.
• Bloomfield, Zachary Stewart. Baptism of a "Deacon's" theatre: audience development at the Boston Museum, 1841-1861 (dissertation). University of Missouri; 1991.
• Andrea Stulman Dennett. Weird and wonderful: the dime museum in America. New York University Press. 1997.
• Peter DeMarco. A museum of the world, and the weird on Tremont St. Boston Globe, May 23, 2004. p. 6.

External links

• WorldCat. Boston Museum (1847-1903)
• Boston Athenaeum. Theatre history.
• Last nights but two of the engagement of Mrs. Barrett. Yale University Library.