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Dime museums were establishments that grew in popularity starting from 1870 that were used to display freak show performers, human anatomy exhibitions, dioramas, oddities, and moral lectures to the general public.Sears, Clare. “Electric Brilliancy: Cross-Dressing Law and Freak Show Displays in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco.” Women’s Studies Quarterly 36, no. 3/4 (2008): 170–87. http://www.jstor.org/stable/27649793. These institutions peaked in popularity at the end of the 19th century all throughout the United States.Thomson, Rosemarie Garland, ed. (1996). Freakery: cultural spectacles of the extraordinary body (5. imp. ed.). New York u.a.: New York Univ. Press. p. 315. . Designed as centers for entertainment and moral education for the working class (low culture), the museums were distinctly different from upper middle class cultural events (highbrow). In urban centers like New York City, where many immigrants settled, dime museums were popular and cheap entertainment. The social trend reached its peak during the Progressive Era (c. 1890–1920). Although lowbrow entertainment, they were the starting places for the careers of many notable vaudeville-era entertainers, including Harry Houdini, Lew Fields, Joe Weber, the Griffin Sisters, and Maggie Cline.
Dime museums took on trends from now controversial Freak show. Freak shows trace their origins to early 19th-century Europe. Freak shows were also a form of mass entertainment; however, they frequently took advantage of the people they put on display. They used non-Western and physically abnormal individuals as spectacles, often accentuating exoticism, Stereotype, fetishes, and exclusionary hierarchies.Půtová, Barbora. “Freak Shows. Otherness Of The Human Body As A Form Of Public Presentation.” Anthropologie (1962-) 56, no. 2 (2018): 91–102. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26476304.
Dime museums were not strictly for a specific group since they were open to anyone who could afford the entrance fee. They were a place where people could enjoy wild entertainment while also learning due to the educational front these museums displayed. Dime museums eventually fell out of style once other forms of entertainment began to rise in popularity. Amusement park, higher-quality films, and vaudeville (a form of theatrical entertainment). These forms of entertainment were refreshing to audiences who had grown accustomed to contents within dime museums. By World War I, dime museums existed only as memory.Dennett, Andrea Stulman. Weird and Wonderful: The Dime Museum in America. New York, NY: New York University Press, 1997. https://doi.org/10.18574/9780814744215.
San Francisco was also home to the Museum of Living Wonders and Woodward's Gardens. These were located on Kearny Street and in the Mission district respectively.Sears, Clare. “Indecent Exhibitions.” In Arresting Dress: Cross-Dressing, Law, and Fascination in Nineteenth-Century San Francisco. pg. 97-120. Duke University Press, 2015. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv1220nx9.
Lisa Rochelle Murray, MA Thesis: P.T. Barnum Presents: The Greatest Classroom on Earth! Historical Inquiry into the Role of Education in Barnum's American Museum The University of Texas at Austin, 2009 The first incarnation "American Museum" on Ann Street burned down on 13 July, 1865. It was relocated further up Broadway, but this venue too, fell victim to fire on 3 March, 1868.
For many years in the basement of the Playland Arcade in Times Square in New York City, Hubert's Museum featured acts such as sword swallower Lady Estelene, Congo The Jungle Creep, a flea circus, a half-man half-woman Alberto Alberta, and magicians such as Earl "Presto" Johnson. This museum was documented in photography by Diane Arbus. Later, in Times Square, mouse pitchman Tommy Laird opened a dime museum that featured Tisha Booty"the Human Pin Cushion"and several magicians, including Lou Lancaster, Criss Capehart, Dorothy Dietrich, Dick Brooks, and others.
In 1883 they opened a new one at 150 S. Clark Street, near Madison (now 10 South Clark Street) and a third one at 150 W. Madison, opposite Union street.
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