Freaks! Assassins! Giant Squids!

Freaks! Assassins! Giant Squids!. 101-103 Bowery. , In 1881, Worth’s Museum and Congress of Living and Intimate Curiosities opened at 101 Bowery. Like other dime museums which lined the Bowery, Worth’s offered a variety of freakish amusements, such as the largest specimen of giant squid in North America and what was claimed to be the preserved head of Charles Julius Guiteau – the assassin of President James Garfield. Children who brought a live mouse to feed to the museum’s 54 rattlesnakes, were admitted for free., From 1876-1878, 103 Bowery was home to Bunnell’s New American Museum, founded by dime museum pioneer George Bunnell, a former assistant to P.T. Barnum. Like Barnum, he offered exotic exhibits and stage shows, but at cheap prices. Housed on three floors, visitors flocked to oddities like the “Two-Brained Baby,” preserved “Mermaids” (dead manatees) and Jo-Jo, “King of Dog-Faced Freaks” (a boy with the condition hypertrichosis). The first floor “Theatorium” offered snake charmers and sword-swallowers, as well as vaudeville and burlesque acts. The second floor was a live animal menagerie and the third floor housed a wax museum devoted to sinners called “Dante’s Inferno,” in which spectators were encouraged to sneer at hated public figures like robber baron Jay Gould and William “Boss” Tweed., - Eric Ferrera, author of The Bowery and founder of the Lower East Side History project (leshp.org)