Books and Manuscripts

[Barnum, P.T.]
Building Blocks & Museum
New York: J. H. (Singer Company), (ca. 1870s-80s). Original wooden box with illustrated cover paper label on lid, with 33 (of 34) wooden blocks of various sizes, each with a different illustrated paper label on four sides; missing block supplied with a period example from another game. Wear and soiling to box lid, lid split and repaired on verso, chipping and small losses to cover label, loss at bottom of lid and lower rim of top of box; paper labels on blocks rubbed and worn, with some loss, with scattered loss; contemporary inscription in pencil on bottom of box. OCLC 78763494

A very rare and well-preserved toy block set from P.T. Barnum's traveling circus, menagerie, and oddities show--the so-called “Greatest Show on Earth”. Featuring over 30 illustrated blocks, showing different exhibits and performances from the show, such as wild animals, a dog face boy, double-headed nightingale, a snake charmer, and more. Presumably created in the 1870s or 1880s, likely when Barnum teamed up with Dan Costello and William Cameron Coup to create “P.T. Barnum's Great Traveling Museum, Menagerie, Caravan, and Hippodrome”, which they considered “The Greatest Show on Earth”. In the 1880s, Barnum's show merged with James Anthony Bailey and James E. Cooper's Cooper and Bailey Circus, to become Barnum and Bailey Circus. 

We cannot locate another example of this set in RBH's auction results. We can find only one institutional example, at the Canadian Centre for Architecture. Worthpoint yields only one result.