Grand Hall, Barnum's American Museum, New York City

Interior view of the first Grand Hall of the American Museum on Broadway. Illustration published in the Gleason's Pictorial, January 29, 1853 (Boston : M.M. Ballou, 1854-1859).

Here, some text from the article in the Gleason's Pictorial that accompanies this illustration: «interior view, representing the first grand hall, opening on the right and left into two others of equal size. In this room is exhibited a portion of the immense Chinese collection, the group of "The Suliote Conspiracy," (...), and a portion of that valuable collection of portraits of distinguished Americans, which the elder Peale spent his entire lifetime in collecting. This latter collection alone is of immense value, and now that none of the originals are left to us, and few have left their "counterfeit presentments" behind them, it is invaluable to the American public, and can never be replaced should accident befall it, which Heaven avert! The "Suliote Conspiracy" is a group of twelve figures, of the size of life, arrayed in the most gorgeous costume of the Greek nation, and representing Lord Byron surrounded by the various personages engaged in that unfortunate struggle of the Greeks to gain their freedom, each figure being a lifelike portrait. By the aid of machinery of the most delicate and complicated nature, these figures all assume the action of life, and it renders them so extremely lifelike, that the observer stares in wonder and amazement. The "Happy Family," too, with which Barnum's name has become inseparably connected, is another of the manifold curiosities of this wonder-awakening establishment. Here are seen animals of the most incongruous natures eating out of the same dish, resting upon the same perch, and making their beds together. Owls and doves, eagles and rabbits, cats and rats, hawks and small birds, monkeys, guinea-pigs, mice, squirrels, and a host of others, "too numerous to mention," forming altogether one of the most incongruous collections ever put together.»