Sunday, March 27, 2011

The Mystic World Of Circus Parades!


Scan13354, originally uploaded by bucklesw1.

Posted by Buckles at 3/27/2011 06:34:00 AM

3 comments:

John Goodall said...

Any idea whose wagon shop this is?

27 March, 2011 08:26
Anonymous said...

This is the Bridgeport paint shop for Barnum & Bailey. The photo was taken about 1915. The interesting thing is that it was on the second floor. All of the wagons were put into an elevator and hand cranked. It took about 20 to 30 minutes per trip. A great description of this department appears in the Jan/Feb 1972 issue of Bandwagon. It is part of a series written by John M. Staley.
Flint

27 March, 2011 12:16
Richard Reynolds said...

Barnum & Bailey, Bridgeport winter quarters. This is the paint shop.

It was on the second floor of a huge wagon and maintenance barn. If I recall correctly, the wagons got up there via an old wooden elevator of a type rather commonly seen at shops and light industrial plants in the early years of the 20th century. It was powered by rope pulleys pulled by men. There is a description of the layout in a piece John Staley wrote for Bandwagon some years ago. This picture was an illustration.

The barn was a fire hazard with all the paint and solvents stored there, not to mention the flammable material that had soaked into the flooring over the years. Sure enough, it went up in flames on February 2, 1924.

There were a lot of bad fires at the Bridgeport quarters over the years and that is undoubtedly one of the reasons RBBB spread out its facilities when it moved to Sarasota at the end of the 1927 season.

The wagon on the right with the carved figure of an Egyptian woman (with the driver’s foot rest extended) is a hippo den. The carvings on this wagon had an Egyptian theme.

We think this hip den was originally built for the Carl Hagenbeck show of 1906, but the intended hippo occupant died before it could be used. From all that appears, the Ringlings then bought it in Cincinnati (the Hagenbeck WQ) and sent it up to Columbus for the Forepaugh-Sells show. They were then part owners and managing F-S under an arrangement with Bailey’s estate.

This hip den went to Baraboo when F-S was shelved at the end of 1907. It was back on F-S in 1910-11. Around 1915 it was sent to Bridgeport for B&B which gives a clue as to the date of this photo. There is a picture of it in B&B’s 1918 menagerie.

RBBB sold it to Mugivan and Bowers in 1920. It was used on their John Robinson show as late as 1928 when it housed hippo Victor.

27 March, 2011 15:18

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