Opening Hours
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Visual Materials
Visual Materials
Daily: 10 A.M.–5 P.M.
Closed on Tuesdays
1151 Oxford Road
San Marino, CA 91108
Visual Materials
Image of George Washington in a horse-drawn carriage with soldiers on horseback riding into the center of a tented circus arena with the audience in the background.
priJLC_ENT_000074
Visual Materials
Image of an empty center arena under a circus tent, with a full audience in the grandstands, and a scene of George Washington crossing the Delaware River painted on the far wall in the background.
priJLC_ENT_000073
Image not available
Visual Materials
This collection contains more than 650 printed items that relate to circuses in the United States from the 1850s to the 1990s. The collection consists of advertising and promotional materials, business records, and illustrations produced for or pertaining to circuses, their tours and shows, staff and performers, acts and exhibits, and animals. Materials are arranged in three series: small-size prints and ephemera (11 x 14 inches or less); large-size prints and ephemera (more than 11 x 14 inches); and broadsides and handbills. The collection has 206 large-size items comprised mainly of lithographic posters containing brightly colored images of featured circus acts, performers, and animals that were typically posted outdoors in advance of the circus coming to town. Small-size items in the collection number more than 320 and are comprised mainly of advertising and promotion ephemera and business documents such as trade cards, programs and souvenir books, route cards, envelopes, tickets, songsters, and printed billheads and letterheads. The 130 broadsides, handbills, and related advertisements consist primarily of long, narrow broadsides printed on newspaper paper in black ink using letterpress type that advertised upcoming circus shows and were intended to be distributed by hand, left in stacks in public places, or posted on walls, fences, or in windows in advance of the circus's arrival in a town. This collection provides a resource for studying the history of the American circus and its impact on popular entertainment and advertising in the 19th and 20th centuries. As graphic materials, the items offer evidence of the development of printmaking techniques and trends, and of the artists, engraves, lithographers, printers, and publishers involved in the creation of these prints.
priJLC_ENT_004733
Visual Materials
Image of the inauguration of James Pollock as Governor of Pennsylvania at the Capitol building in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; crowds of people, officers on horseback, and horse-drawn vehicles make orderly lines along the street in front of the Capitol.
priJLC_POL_002658
Visual Materials
Image of female acrobat and juggler Aimee Parnella performing four different acts simultaneously in a circus ring with spectators in grandstands in the background; vignette of a head-and-shoulders portrait of circus founder Adam Forepaugh in upper left.
priJLC_ENT_001330
Visual Materials
Image of three vignettes with head-and-shoulder portraits of circus owners Peter Sells, at left, Adam Forepaugh, at center, and Lewis Sells, at right.
priJLC_ENT_001331