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I was recently read an interesting piece in Orchids magazine about the first orchid show in the US. For copyright reasons, I won’t reproduce the article here, but I’ll share a little of what I learned.
The U.S.’s first orchid show was not an elegant arboretum, but rather it was held in the late 19th century at the Eden Musee in the Tenderloin district of New York City.
The Eden Musee was a so called “dime museum”, though it actually cost a quarter. Dime museums were pioneered by P.T. Barnum, and they were a bit of a hode podge of sensationalism. For what was initially a dime, the urban riffraff and Gilded Age elite alike could see entertainment such as wax figure displays, freak shows, seances, fire eaters, and concerts.
Orchids would seem like an odd fit, but, in fact, they were a huge hit. The show was orchestrated by the nursery Siebrecht & Son Nurseries.
Some illustrations of what they saw:
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