Who Burned Down Barnum’s Museum?: 19th Century Social Conflict.
Barnum's Unionist sympathies incited a Confederate sympathizer to start a fire in 1864. Barnum's American Museum burned to the ground on July 13, 1865 from a fire of unknown origin. Barnum re-established it at another location in New York City, but this also was destroyed by fire in March 1868.
Barnum's World Michael O'Malley, Associate Professor of History and Art History, George Mason University Assignment Background. This is a computer rendered graphic of the second floor landing of Barnum's Museum, based on strict measurements taken from floor plans, tourist's descriptions of the museum and its contents, and published guidebooks.
Wikimedia Commons P.T. Barnum The museum burned down in 1865, the result of a furnace fire in the basement. No humans were harmed, though almost all of the museums' animals died, and the two beluga whales in the aquarium horrifically boiled alive in their tanks. Not easily deterred, Barnum rebuilt the museum and promised to fully stock it again.
A new museum was soon opened, but that one burned in 1868. Barnum began a real circus in 1870 at the age of 60, and when he merged with James Bailey’s circus in 1881 Barnum and Bailey’s Circus became the largest circus in the world.
In the mid 1800s, it was unthinkable to visit New York City without a visit to Barnum’s American Museum. P.T. Barnum’s stunning building occupied a prominent corner on Lower Broadway at the corner of Ann Street from 1841 to 1865.
When Barnum returned to the United States, the Feejee Mermaid took up residence at Kimball's museum in Boston. That is its last known location. In the early 1800s, Kimball's museum burned down.
The museum came to be identified with the Northern cause, and when Confederate agents travelled to New York in the fall of 1864, planning to burn down the city, one of the blazes they set was at.