In July of 2018. We returned again to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania and one of our stops on this trip was to the Gettysburg Dime Museum. We had heard that this location would be closing, and we had to stop and check out the collection.
The museum is (was) housed in an amazing historical building, just down from the Gettysburg town center.
Parking was a little challenging on the day that we visited since we were there during bike week, again; however, we were able to manage walking up to the museum from our room at the Farnsworth Inn.
Normally we would try to provide and address, map to the location, and a link to the location's website, but unfortunately like we mentioned, the museum is now officially closed. It is unfortunate that this museum closed, and yes, we call it a museum. Just a great collection of the strange and unusual, was nice to have a little break from some of the historical and haunted locations we were researching during the weekend.
Dime museums were institutions that were popular at the end of the 19th century in the United States. Designed as centers for entertainment and moral education for the working class (lowbrow), the museums were distinctly different from upper middle class cultural events (highbrow). In urban centers like New York City, where many immigrants settled, dime museums were popular and cheap entertainment. The social trend reached its peak during the Progressive Era (c. 1890–1920). Although lowbrow entertainment, they were the starting places for the careers of many notable vaudeville-era entertainers, including Harry Houdini, Lew Fields, Joe Weber, and Maggie Cline.
P.T. Barnum purchased Scudder's Dime Museum in 1841 and transformed it into one of the most popular single cultural sites that has ever existed, Barnum's American Museum. Together, P.T. Barnum and Moses Kimball introduced the so-called "Edutainement", which was a moralistic education realized through sensational freak shows, theater and circus performances, and many other means of entertainment
There were so many different and interesting items to look at that were so well labeled and documented. We must have spent at least hour walking around looking at all of the treasures and to show you everything that Marianne got pictures of in this post would just take up so much space... there is a link at the bottom of this post to more pictures from the museum.
Where else can you learn that the designed of the Pringles can had actually requested that his family take some of his ashes and bury them in one of the cans? You don't learn this kind of interesting information in a regular museum.
We would like to say that we plan on stopping back at the museum when we return to Gettysburg again in the future, but sadly we cannot. Although, we are so glad that we did have a chance to stop and get some photos and videos so that we can document it here for all of you to experience as well. Please let us know down in the comments if you have visited the museum, or any other dime museum in the past. We would love to hear about it, and don't forget to check out some more of the photos from this location.
