Circuses

Circuses. The circus arrived in America in 1793, when the English rider John Bill Ricketts and his troupe held a show in an enclosed arena in Philadelphia. Ricketts brought jugglers, acrobats, ropewalkers, clowns, and trained animals together into one circular arena for the first time in the United States, in front of an audience that included President George Washington. Soon other European artists were performing in permanent wooden buildings at major population centers along the eastern seaboard. These early one‐ring shows bore little resemblance to the sprawling three‐ring circus of the 1890s; they had no parade, nor did they perform in canvas tents. But, like their successors, these first American circuses provided audiences with an exciting window into the world.

In the early nineteenth century, circuses moved slowly by horseback or boat. Wagon travel began in 1825, when circuses started using the canvas tent, an innovation borrowed from the itinerant animal menagerie shows. With their tents quickly erected and disassembled, circuses became increasingly nomadic. No longer dependent upon urban markets to cover the costs of constructing wooden arenas, showmen could now play in rural areas. As a traveling amusement, circuses, became notorious as hotbeds of gambling and vice. Several states banned the Antebellum Era circus, which was often shunned by “respectable” middle‐class families.

During the nineteenth century, the growth of circuses mirrored the physical expansion of the American republic. The circus's development depended upon internal improvements such as roads and canals and inventions like the steamship and especially railroads. Just weeks after the final spike of the transcontinental railroad was hammered home at Promentory Point, Utah, in 1869, Dan Castello's Circus and Menagerie made the first transcontinental railroad tour in American circus history. As railroad companies constructed more miles of track, Gilded Age railroad circuses grew rapidly. By the 1890s, many proprietors had adopted from other popular amusement, such as the freak show and the world's fairs features like the sideshow and the “ethnological congress.” (i.e., exhibitions of tribal peoples in exotic settings and native garb). On “circus day,” showmen conducted a free parade to attract paying customers.

The Museum proprietor P.T. Barnum, entering the railroad circus business in 1870, contributed significantly to the industry. With partners W.C. Coup, Dan Castello, and, later, James A. Bailey, Barnum made advertising a priority. Barnum and Bailey's circus employed scores of “advance men” who plastered thousands of lithograph posters throughout a town weeks beforehand. By 1890, their vast big top contained three rings, two stages, a peripheral hippodrome track, and space for ten thousand spectators. An outspoken temperance advocate, Barnum banned liquor from his shows and trumpeted his circus as “moral” entertainment that attracted middle‐class families. Competitors like the Ringling Brothers echoed Barnum's claims with their self‐styled “Sunday School” circus. Yet circuses remained venues for fights, gambling, and drunkenness.

In 1900, nearly one hundred circuses roamed the country—the highest number in American history. The Ringling Brothers’ organization became a huge circus conglomerate. Circuses shaped Americans’ views about race, gender, and contemporary politics. Employing hundreds of people and assembling animals from around the globe, railroad circuses brought the world to small‐town America. Displaying exotic people and animals as representatives of a racial and zoological hierarchy, circuses helped popularize scientific theories concerning racial difference. Displaying reenactments of recent foreign battles and peace treaties, circuses celebrated American nationalism and involvement in world affairs. Muscular circus performers embodied the physical fitness ideals of President Theodore Roosevelt and other practitioners of the “strenuous life.”

By the 1920s, circus parades had mostly disappeared because towns were too clogged with cars to accommodate them. During the Depression, John Ringling North, owner of the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus (and nephew of the original Ringling Brothers), attempted to make the circus more appealing to current public taste by hiring industrial designer Norman Bel Geddes to modernize the midway. In 1956, beset by rising labor and transportation costs as well as by the after effects of a tragic 1944 circus‐tent fire in Hartford, Connecticut, that took 168 lives, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey circus abandoned the canvas tent in favor of air‐conditioned urban arenas that dramatically diminished the circus's presence. Furthermore, the advent of radio and television eroded the circus's authority as an educational amusement. With its elephant pyramids and dancing tigers, the circus came to seems anachronistic when one could easily see animals in their native habitat on television. However, the shared experience of watching live animals and human beings perform astounding feats still continued to draw countless Americans to the circus each year. The Circus World Museum in the Ringling Brothers’ hometown of Baraboo, Wisconsin, preserves the history of this long‐lived popular‐culture institution.
See also Canals and Waterways; Leisure; Popular Culture; Race, Concept of; Racism; World's Fairs and Expositions.

Bibliography

Neil Harris , Humbug: The Art of P.T. Barnum, 1973.
Fred Dahlinger Jr. , The Development of the Railroad Circus (4 parts), Bandwagon: Journal of the Circus Historical Society 27–28 (Nov/Dec. 1983–May/June 1984): 6–11, 16–27, 28–36.
A.H. Saxon , P.T. Barnum, The Legend and the Man, 1989.
Stuart Thayer , Travelling Showmen: The American Circus before the Civil War, 1997.

Janet Davis