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 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;... elephants and ourang-outangs..."[5]
[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."[11]
Boston Museum, no.18 Tremont St., Boston, 1841-1846
Feejee Mermaid, 1842
Advertisement for the Boston Museum, 19th century
The Children of Cyprus; 1851 production
The Children of Cyprus (final act); 1851 production
Playbill, 1864
Detail of 1883 map of Boston, showing location of the Boston Museum
James F. O'Gorman. H. and J. E. Billings of Boston: From Classicism to the Picturesque. The Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Mar., 1983), pp. 54-73. Includes illustrations.
Bostonian Society, Philip Bergen. Old Boston in early photographs, 1850-1918: 174 prints from the collection of the Bostonian Society. Courier Dover Publications, 1990. Includes photo illustration of the museum.
Thomas Boylston Adams. Here We Have Lived: The Houses of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, Vol. 78 (1966).
Catalogue of the paintings, portraits, marble and plaster statuary, engravings & 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, &c. Boston, 1847. Quoted in: O'Gorman. H. and J. E. Billings of Boston; p.58.
Bruce A. McConachie. H. J. Conway's Dramatization of Uncle Tom's Cabin: A Previously Unpublished Letter. Theatre Journal, Vol. 34, No. 2, Insurgency in American Theatre (May, 1982), pp. 149-154.
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.
Published in the 20th century
Clapp. "The great dramatic quinquennium and The Boston Museum." Reminiscences of a dramatic critic. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1902. Internet Archive
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.
Published in the 21st century
Peter DeMarco. A museum of the world, and the weird on Tremont St. Boston Globe, May 23, 2004. p.6.
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