Columbian Museum facts for kids
The Columbian Museum (1795–1825) was a museum and performance space in Boston, Massachusetts, established by Daniel Bowen, and continued by William M. S. Doyle. The museum featured artworks, natural history specimens, wax figures, and other curiosities.
Brief history
Daniel Bowen (ca. 1760–1856) established the Columbian Museum in Boston in 1795. Prior to this time, Bowen had overseen the display of "a few specimens of waxwork, at the American Coffee House, opposite the Bunch-of-Grapes, in State street. Additions of natural and artificial curiosities and paintings were constantly made to the collection till 1795, when it assumed the name of Columbian Museum." Located "at the head of the mall" near the Boston Common, the museum's collection included items from Edward Savage's "New York Museum."; paintings by Robert Edge Pine; and other curiosities.
In addition to exhibiting objects and animals, the museum provided a venue for performing arts such as musical concerts for organ and voice. In 1797, for instance, "Chalmers, Williamson, and Barrett gave an olio of readings lectures, recitations and songs entitled 'Nature in Nubibus, or a Melicosmeotes -- an antidote for the spleen.'" In 1800, "the Columbian Museum will be opened and elegantly illuminated This Evening, Dec. 25. Music suited to the Evening on the Grand Piano Forte by Mr. Dolliver. Also the whole variety of the Concert Organ, and Musical Clocks performed on this occasion." In 1804, "Mr. Bates" performed a program of skits, stories, and songs, and also phantasmagoria.
The museum enjoyed considerable popularity. One historian notes the broadening cultural effect of the "famous Columbian Museum, where New England began learning to be less provincial."
Bowen developed a number of side-businesses, including the Columbian Museum Press, an auction room, and retail sales.
The brief, dramatic history of the museum from 1803 through 1807 reflects the commitment and persistence of Bowen, his supporters, and loyal museum patrons. A fire on January 15, 1803, damaged the business; a few months later, the museum re-opened in a new location, on the corner of Milk Street and Oliver Street.
In 1806, Bowen and William M.S. Doyle (1769–1828) moved the museum to Tremont Street, into their newly built "costly brick edifice, five stories high." The new building occupied the lot adjacent to King's Chapel Burying Ground. However another fire in 1807 wreaked havoc. The fire had begun "from the explosion of a preparation used in [the] exhibition of the Phantasmagoria, then occupying the upper hall." Several people were killed, and some wounded, when a wall of the burned museum building collapsed into the burying ground next door. Bowen and Doyle rebuilt again, and re-opened the museum in a two-story building in June, 1807.
However, after 1807, Bowen suffered financial ruin, and withdrew from museum operations. Doyle assumed directorship thenceforth, until 1825, when Ethan Allen Greenwood acquired the collections for his newly established New England Museum.
