Midway Directory · Kinds of listings
Oddity shops and curiosity museums
A curiosity museum, oddity shop or dime-museum-style attraction: cabinets of curiosities, wax figures, sideshow banners and the strange things the midway once put on show.
An oddity shop or curiosity museum puts strange things on show: cabinets of curiosities, wax figures, sideshow banners, specimens. The line runs back to Barnum’s American Museum, bought in 1841, which drew crowds with sensational exhibits mixed with instruction, and to the dime museums and sideshows that followed.
What it is
Part museum, part shop, part show: the sideshow tent of the midway, kept open all year.
History, era by era
- 1841
- Barnum bought the American Museum in New York, the first institution to combine sensational entertainment and gaudy display with instruction.1
- 1893
- The Chicago Midway mixed amusements with ethnological exhibits and foreign villages, shows that charged extra.2
- 1890s–1900s
- Travelling carnivals carried sideshows to towns across America after the Chicago fair.3
- Today
- The Barnum Museum in Bridgeport keeps more than 60,000 artifacts of Barnum and 19th-century America.4
The midway connection
The curiosity was always part of the midway; the Chicago Midway sold it by the ticket, and the carnival sideshow sold it after that.23
Wherever people walk a row of booths, the midway is there in some form: the full kind, with rides, games of skill and food joints, or the quieter kind, with craft tables, home baking and a booth like ours. That walk, with family and friends and something to look at every few steps, is what this directory is about.
One fact worth knowing
- Admission to Barnum’s American Museum was twenty-five cents.1
Questions people ask
What was a dime museum?
A popular museum of curiosities and shows; Barnum’s American Museum, bought in 1841, set the model.1
Where does the sideshow come from?
From exhibits like Barnum’s and the paid shows of the 1893 Midway, carried on by travelling carnivals.23
Sources
- The Lost Museum, American Social History Project (CUNY): The story of Barnum's American Museum. Read on · reference
- Chicago Park District: Midway Plaisance Park. Read on · government
- South End Historical Society: The Origins of the American Traveling Carnival. Read on · reference
- The Barnum Museum: About the museum. Read on · official
How these listings work
Listings are free and factual; nobody pays to be here. Every line on a listing points to its source, official pages first, and each source shows the day we read it. What we couldn't confirm is listed on the page, not guessed. Each page sits under its city and province or state, next to the fairs nearby.
Listed in the census (short listings)
The Midway Mailbag
New fairs, festivals, midways and attractions as we add them to the directory. About twice a month in fair season, less in winter.
All kinds of listings · Midway Directory
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