The publishing of a journal was undertaken which perished after the appearance of the first number.
In 1827 Charles Willson Peale died and the next year the museum moved into the Arcade on Chestnut Street above Sixth Street., on the north side. In 1835, the stock of the company was increased from $100,000 to $400,000 and a magnificent building was started at Ninth and Sansom on the site of the present Continental Hotel. Three years later the collections were moved from the Arcade into their new home.
Up to this time the museum had been very prosperous financially and had become largely a money-making concern. In 1841 the failure of the United States Bank carried down the Museum Company. The receivers of the bank foreclosed on the building, which was soon sold at auction. By paying rent the Museum Company was allowed by the new owner to occupy the building. In the hard times that followed, the Museum Company attempted to keep its head above water by vaudeville attractions and concerts. Thus the museum was thrown into direct competition with the dime museum as typified by Barnum's Museums. The directors of the company were not equal to competition with the trained showman. When, in 1846, the end came, the collections were sold at auction, the pictures going all over the country; yet one third subsequently came back to Independence Hall.
An attempt was made to keep the Natural History collections together; and until 1850 they were exhibited at Masonic Hall, but not by the Peales. At that time they were sold by the sheriff and bought for five or six thousand dollars by P. T. Barnum and his associate, Moses Kimball. They were divided, half going to the Boston Museum and half going to Barnum's American Museum, in New York.[1] Legend has it that the mastodon went to this latter place and was destroyed when, in 1865, the American Museum burned. Since its whereabouts[2] was not known in 1852 when Warren wrote his monograph, it is possible that it was burned in the fire that destroyed, in 1851, Barnum's Philadelphia Museum. If this be the case it would seem to indicate that Barnum did not take all his share of the specimens to New York as he said he did. In either case it was destroyed.
In 1900 the Boston Museum broke up, and the specimens were presented to the Boston Society of Natural History, where about 1,300 of the birds now are. There is nothing to indicate that any specimens were added to the collections after they were removed from the Philadelphia Museum.
- ↑ P. T. Barnum, "How I Made Millions"; the life of P. T. Barnum, written by himself.
- ↑ "The bones mentioned by Warren as being exhibited in Paris belong, I judge, to a mass of bones of several animals which were found at Big Bone Lick. An attempt was made to sell them to Peale. As they were from several animals he refused to buy them. Cf. "The Navigator," Pittsburg, 1811, 7th edition, p. 117.
