Themes in American History

Barnum’s American Museum was located at the corner of Broadway and Ann Street in New York, from 1841 to 1865. The museum was mysteriously burnt at that time and the Lost museum was recreated to have people in modern time to visit and experience culture in the 19th century through website.  The museum offered both strange, and educational attractions.

Barnum opened his museum  to create a place where families could go for wholesome, affordable entertainment, but his success drew from the fact that he knew how to entice an audience. At its peak, the museum was open fifteen hours a day and had as many as 15,000 visitors a day. The museum was a spectacular place for people coming to enjoy it in 19th century.  People came to this place with their families and socialize with other people.  The cultural history of New York was people gathered in one place and watch other people’s show and share their opinions with each other while they were exploring the museum.

In my opinion, the strength about the website as a historical tool like Lost museum is that it helps people to experience and have more understanding about the historical facts that were really exist and greatly affected people but been destroyed. The weakness was it was mimicking the historical event, the accuracy would be affected.

Comments Off on The lost Museum

The Lost Museum provides a very informative source to understand the 19^th century of America. The website is not only about one aspect. It includes American history and the entertainment of 19^th century. The best part of this museum is provides a huge numbers of picture, animation and copies of old document. It makes this virtual museum feels like I’m walking into an actual museum.

In the Waxwork room on second floor, I find some information about automaton. The 19^th century is an industrialized age. The time before the advent motion picture and electronic devices become popular. Automaton was the most advance technology entertainment at that time. In that period of time automaton has been largely produced for different purposes. One of the usages is entertainment. People fascinated in advance technology and like to see different automaton perform. In the picture below show an Automaton Chess Player. It was the most famous automaton of all time. The reason why it is so famous is because it is not only automaton chess playerimitated human behavior. It appeared to be a thinking machine to make the best decision and win chess experts and European royals. It fascinates audiences about how its operation.

Comments Off on Explore The Lost Mesuem

The website is set up to make the visitor feel like he is in an actual museum. The visitor can “walk” through the museum and look through different displays. By clicking when a question mark appears, the visitor can read the descriptions of the historical artifacts that they are looking at. It is a good historical artifact because it allows people to learn about history. It provides a good 3D visual and provides a wealth of descriptions that encourage learning.



This looks pretty realistic but doesnt feel like an actual museum

Although there are many things that make this website a great historical tool, there are a few turn offs. A virtual museum does not give the same feeling as a real museum. The ability to actually see and touch real artifacts that are within reach is was makes a museum a museum. Seeing virtual reinactments on a screen does not really give a visitor the feeling of seeing something significant. Also, the virtual controls were very annoying. The whole concept is a good idea but the interface was terrible. It took me a while to get the hang of the navigation within the museum. If the controls are improved, the website might be a lot better.

1 Comment »

There’s always that moment when you wish you were around for something that is no longer there. Well, with our amazing technology, we are able to actually travel back in time to be there. One of the ways we can is with The Lost Museum website, a virtual tour of P.T. Barnum’s American Museum. We are able to explore the museum floor by floor, room by room, by using only the internet. With the mouse being your tour guide, and graphics so good as to have life like rats running across the floor, you are in for a wild ride. However, I found my ride to be somewhat of a interesting yet confusing one. Only confusing in the sense that I felt there was no theme to the museum and there was a little bit of any and everything going on from room to room. What I found most interesting though, was the etiquette slideshow in the lecture room.

The Lecture Room

This tells me that in 19th century New York City, although there was a great amount of diversity, there was also social norms that had to be followed. There were “rules” of how society should behave as a whole and it seems as though that was part of the entertainment. However, it also looks to me as though this shows separation of the economic statuses. Looking at the slides, there seemed to be higher class people, well dressed with furs and top hats, in theaters, etc., which makes sense as to why they were mandated to learn certain etiquette. As a whole, I feel as though this is a great historical tool because it shows the diversity but yet the separation of society at the time and the different types of entertainment and information that was shown then to how present day museums are. For example, we have different museums for different things but in there, everything was combined into one.

3 Comments »

The Lost museum website impressed me. It has both, strengths as well weaknesses. You don’t need to pay for an entry ticket and no traveling time is required. You could simply sit comfortably in your house and explore the museum. Many people don’t visit museums just because they have to go there and spend much of their time exploring it. The website is designed in an innovative way, making it fun to explore and learn about history. It’s a very good historical tool for people who are not willing to visit a real museum. There is lot of information on a site that is served to a viewer, in a much more entertaining way. Learning in a fun environment is much more beneficial than forcing yourself into learning something.
The downside of the site is its poor graphical design. I found myself confused at times, didn’t know where to click. The camera doesn’t allow you to walk freely throughout the floors, you feel like you are guided by someone in a strict way. The design could discourage a person from assimilating all the historical information present in the museum.

Comments Off on Website as a historical tool

In the Lost Museum, there is a model wearing female dress and carrying a metal bucket, however, it is with a male face. It is a figure that represents the image of Confederate President Jefferson Davis when he purportedly disguised himself as his wife in order to get rid of the arrest of Union soldiers. Although media did not have advanced technology to take photos or videos to record the historical events in 1800s, they used many other ways to try to show the situation again.

The model in the Lost Museum is not the only public to present this event, many newspapers had sketches of the photo and draw cartoons to express opinions about it. In the picture, it was a cartoon from Harper’s Weekly. In this cartoon, it mocked the Confederate States and its president with the presentation of feminine attributes. It was the general attitude of Northerners toward Southerners during that time. These Historical records provided perfect evidence of the Civil War about the Northerners’, or even New Yorkers’ opinions.  Furthermore, people during that time had chances to receive news and trends in many different ways, by visiting the museum, reading newspapers or magazines and recieving handouts. The Lost Museum has well preserved these historical records and presented these to the public.

Comments Off on Historical Records in the Lost Museum

Today I visited “The Lost Museum.” This virtual museum looked very realistic; I felt like I was actually visiting the museum. I can see how historical and artisitc the museum. Unfortunately, this museum burned down, which I found ironic because in the Picture Gallery, there was an article written by P.T. Barnum that spoke about mysterious fires in New York City and he was trying to identify the criminal behind these fires. “The Lost Museum” portrayed how it was one of the most entertaining landmarks in New York City during its time. If it were still standing, it would defnitely continue to be an attraction in the Big Apple. This museum doesn’t only act as an art gallery but it contains documents that explain some very shocking events in American History including the fires that raged throughout the city and the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. New York City is currently known for its various museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art and Museum of Natural History; therefore, P.T. Barnum’s “The Lost Museum” would flourish in nowadays. It possesses many valuable artifacts from America’s nineteenth century entertainment and history. There were images and even figures of animals, tall people, presidents, anything; you name it! These aspects of the museum would make it a very useful historical tool of the nineteenth century.

The exhibit that intrigued me most was the one that had images of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, located on the second floor in the WaxWorks Room. I never knew that John Wilkes Booth was accompanied by two other men, David C. Harold and John H. Surrat. The image below shows the rewards that were issued on April 20th, 1865 by the War Department in Washington D.C. for the three men responsible for the murder of America’s beloved sixteenth president. There was another poster a few posts below talking about the image which is dedicated in memory of Lincoln. It’s the flyer for the play at Ford Theater, during which he was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth. I think that the addition of these historical artifacts adds meaning and value to the museum and definitely shows that this museum was a landmark.

Rewards for Abraham Lincoln's assassination.

3 Comments »

Fire lecture film ironic since museum was burnt down

When I first visited “The Lost Museum” I got bored and I was not interested. Truthfully, the ground floor did not really capture my attention. So, I decided to move up to the second floor and check out if there was something more entertaining. I was impressed based on what I saw on the second and third floor. I was also surprised to see that this museum was different. It actually had a wide variety of exhibits ranging from those that dealt with history, science, and entertainment. The lecture film about fire caught my attention. I thought it was a little funny and ironic that this museum included a lecture film about fire as both Iranistan (Barnum’s mansion) and Barnum’s American Museum burned down. It was also interesting to see the amounts of fires that destroyed New York City and how fires were such a big problem for the city of New York.

“The Lost Museum” showed me something very important about entertainment in 19th century NYC; that it is not much different than entertainment today. The “freak show” aspect of the museum reminded me of the Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum in Manhattan. The wax figures in the waxworks room on the second floor were similar to Madame Tussauds wax museum also in Manhattan. Many people in New York City visit both of these museums for entertainment purposes probably the same way others visited The Barnum Museum in New York City in the 19th century.

I thought the interactive aspect of this website was a very effective tool to choose to include. It makes the visitors feel like they are in a actual museum. It is as if they are able to walk through it, move up levels and it keeps your attention and interest. The strength of this website is its ability to depict a form of entertainment in the 19th century and show how similar it is to forms of entertainment today. It also informs the visitors of the website about several different historical facts such as the assault on Charles Sumner by Preston S. Brooks (which actually happened). In my opinion, I feel they should have attempted to make the ground floor more interesting or for it to contain more interesting facts as it would impress the viewers and keep  them in the website to continue o to the other floors so they could learn more.

Comments Off on Losing Myself in The Lost Museum

While I was exploring “The Lost Museum” I developed my knowledge of the US and the NYC history from the virtual exhibits. P.T. Barnum has created the space where people could see lots of exhibits that inform us what was going on during the era of 1800s throughout the museum. This website gave us the chance to visit the Barnum museum once again and I believe this webpage is great in the way to navigate us the whole museum virtually.

There are three floors in the museum and I enjoyed exploring the whole sections, and the one place that caught my attention the most was the lecture room on the third floor. In the room, there is a monitor and you can view the lecture films “fire” and “etiquette” on the screen. I viewed the film on the etiquette, and I learned that the early nineteenth century was the time when the etiquette became important in the society. People with better manner was thought as people from better class, and it played a huge role in the republican society during the era. It was unavailable to pick the pictures from the film slide and the only picture I could get from the archive was the displaying picture, however from the film and the articles from the archive, you can get a lot of information about the role of etiquette in 1800s.

Comments Off on The Role of the Etiquette

Barnum was an American showman, businessman and entertainer during the nineteenth century. The lost museum website has been developed; since the museum burned to the ground. The museum was affordable and family oriented; its attractions made it a combination  zoo, museum, lecture hall, wax museum and theater, that was, at the same time a central site in the development of the American popular culture. My tour into the museum has been a thrilling one; one of the most famous was General Tom Thumb a 25- inch tall dwarf. Stratton is the real name of General Tom Thumb, Barnum made him nationally and internationally famous. From a very early age he taught him to sing and dance so that he shines in the show business. Barnum also accompanied him to Europe to perform in the audience, and General Tom Thumb also gained popularity as an international star after the tour.

            New York nineteenth century society unites historians, scholars, artists, philosophers and dreamers. Members volunteer their time and talents to help one another create public events, workshops, lectures, exhibitions etc.

Comments Off on entertainment in the nineteenth century New York

P.T Barnum’s Museum was burned down in 1865 and “The Lost Museum” became a website that gave people the chance to discover what the museum was all about. If your not much of a online computer person, you would have trouble navigating through the website.

I felt like I was Sherlock Holmes trying to solve a mystery. There was much to explore in this virtual museum. This museum was a place where families could go for entertainment. The way the museum attracted people was through a combination of having a zoo, lecture hall, wax museum, theater and a freak show. During this time, it was vital development of American popular culture. What stood out to me was the image below. It is the original “FeJee Mermaid” (a monkey’s head and torso combine with half of a fish) and it was originally brought in the Museum in 1842. It’s purpose was to be attractive and appealing to Americans’ fascination.

Comments Off on Attracting Museum