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BALTIMORE DIME MUSEUM |
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I've hung out in haunted houses, tracked down big-footed trespassers, climbed through crumbling cemeteries and ambled around abandoned amusement parks. But of all the places I've been and all the things I've done, there was only ever one place to go, one thing to do, where I was assured of a truly weird experience every time.
Only one place I could go where I was guaranteed to see a ghost, promised to pet a monster and could always count on being blown away by something so unimaginable my own twisted mind couldn't, wouldn't, dare dream it up. The American Dime Museum in Baltimore. The last of a dying breed, the American Dime Museum was among the final spots in the nation where passersby could gawk, gape and gag at the wonderments and oddities which once regularly greeted curious customers at sideshows, carnivals and circuses of a bygone era. Sadly, while the American Dime Museum outlasted most of its contemporaries, the morbid museum hasn't been able to survive in the 21st century. Although he was fiscally savvy enough to increase the traditional cost of admission to a dime museum, but only up to a rate of $5 per customer, American Dime Museum director Dick Horne cited a lack of operating money and an inability to find any additional funding as the death knell for his museum.
The ever-escalating costs of rent, insurance, utilities and operating expenses outpaced the city's hunger for unnatural history. On Dec. 31, the American Dime Museum in Baltimore closed its doors indefinitely. Although Horne was optimistic the spirit of the museum would live on in some capacity, it is unlikely such an eclectic assortment of oddball memorabilia will ever be assembled in arranged in such a manner as the two-story Maryland Avenue museum. The dime museum concept dates back prior to the 19th Century when wealthy and eccentric Europeans, not knowing how else to spend their fortunes, amassed collections of exotic and one-of-a-kind objects - assembling 'Cabinets of Wonder' for their private homes and estates.
The idea tapped into humanity's deep-rooted desire to collect what is curious, buy the bizarre and horde the horrible. It was an instant hit and visitors often flocked from far and wide to witness such an assortment of oddities collected under one roof.
Perfected by the likes of P.T. Barnum and his "sucker born every minute" philosophy, dime museums flourished with America's desire to see the strange. Extensive exhibitions of man-made and natural curiosities sated the public's need for entertainment and, when coupled with live performances and menageries, made millionaires out of men like Barnum - even though admission was typically just one dime. When the dime museums had thoroughly shocked their local crowds into ambivalence and became hard-pressed to come up with new ideas to continue suckering the same suckers - their proprietors took the show on the road. As the 19th Century gave way to the 20th, these roving dime museums, known more commonly as carnivals, criss-crossed America - wowing a whole new generation of spectators at stops in almost any and every town and village. These were the glory days for the sideshows, which were generally well-stocked with multi-headed livestock, bizarre mutations and hybrids such as 'Alligator Boy,' and long lost legends like the 'Fiji Mermaid' and America's own western 'Jackalope.' While many sought out carnivals for the whirling rides, sugary confections and tantalizing tunes, most couldn't wait to make their way to the back of the fairway where sideshow barkers shouted out to passersby about horribly wonderful oddities available for perusal for just a small admission fee.
As the nation recovered from World War II, it was apparent there would be no place for roaming carnivals and sideshows in a post-war America. Yet still road shows and dime museums lived on well into the 21st Century. In Baltimore , Horne and his former business partner James Taylor were able to assemble one of the nation's greatest collections of original dime museum and sideshow attractions. A tribute to the museums and sideshows of old, the American Dime Museum in Baltimore contained such classics as the 'Samoan Sea Wurm,' 'Devil Main' and the 'Peruvian Amazon Mummy," yet Horne and Taylor were closely monitoring the barometer for modern weirdness. In recent years, the American Dime Museum featured an aquarium with live snakehead fish, the bizarre beasties which made national news after ravaging and infesting a Maryland pond.
One of the roving attractions recently featured at the American Dime Museum and advertised on a bright colorful banner from outside was 'World's Largest Bat - could kill a horse!' In true sideshow fashion, dime museum visitors eager to catch a glimpse of some type of mutant, giant vampire bat with leathery wings and dripping fangs were instead led downstairs and shown a baseball bat which must have been 25 feet long - not quite what some imagined, but neither could the proprietors be called liars because the hefty piece of lumber probably could have indeed killed a horse.
From giant balls of string to gum-covered woman, five-legged dogs to two-bodied ducks, from Abraham Lincoln's ear to artwork made entirely of woven human hair, trombone-playing turtles to shotgun-brandishing squirrels and from Siamese babies in jars to miniature flea circuses - my hat is off to the American Dime Museum in Baltimore for refusing to walk the straight and narrow. It is indeed a sad day when our children have to grow up in a world where the only half-alligator, half-men they can see is on a computer screen or an old postcard.
So, goodbye American Dime Museum, you'll always hold a place in our hearts for letting us hold the hearts, and other organs, of man and beast alike and for giving us weirdoes a place where we felt at home.
Words by Brian |
I've been to a lot of weird places and done a lot of weird things.
In early 19th Century America, some brave entrepreneurs put two-and-two together and wagered ordinary people would spend money to see some not-so-ordinary things. They were right and almost overnight the dime museum was born.
Furry fish, shrunken heads, giants, mummies, improbable animal acrobats and more of the world's strangest flotsam and jetsam waited behind each curtain.
Among the American Dime Museum's final exhibits was 'Good Mourning America - where do they go from here?' The collection of mortuary science and macabre artifacts examined how Americans grieved in the 19 th Century and received great accolades from local critics.
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