AMERICAN ENTERTAINMENT HISTORY
[DIME MUSEUM]. Tammany Museum Broadside Agreement. [New York]: John Buel, (1796). Letterpress agreement printed for Gardiner Baker, proprietor of the Tammany Museum of New York, completed in manuscript, with embosed seal at lower right, and SIGNED by Baker, agreeing to allow one Elijah Cock (“being a member of the Tammany Society”), his wife and children entrance to Baker’s Manhattan museum. 13 ½ x 8 1/8”. Laid down on old paper, with old folds and chips, and small losses at intersecting folds. RARE.
Established in New York by the Tammany Society in 1793, Baker’s museum was erected in the same building where America’s first Supreme Court convened. The “American Museum,” was created as a monument to relics of American history, along with curiosities of nature and art. In 1795 complete control of the museum was relinquished to Gardner Baker. The first keeper of the collection, his name appears on this broadside. To broaden the appeal of the attraction, Baker expanded its holdings to include displays of wax figures, a small menagerie, a magic lantern, and a host of freakish curiosities. In the process, he not only laid the groundwork for P.T. Barnum’s celebrated New York museums in the following century, but perhaps unwittingly established the idea of what would become the American sideshow by establishing in the Tammany Museum what was, arguably, the first “dime museum.”