The Museum at Palace of Wonders

For as long as humanity has existed, there has been the desire to collect, especially to collect the strange, the unusual, the bizarre and the exotic. This drive led to the Cabinets of Wonder--collections of exotic objects gathered by wealthy and often eccentric Europeans prior to the 19th Century. These personal collections were the spiritual ancestors of the ultimate collections: the dime museums.
Though simply called museums in their early form, the idea of a collection of objects which the public would pay to see spread quickly in early 19th Century America. And by the mid-1800s, the idea had become so popular with the American public that entrepreneurial geniuses like P. T. Barnum became millionaires through the exhibition of vast collections of man-made and natural curiosities. Eventually, capitalizing on the public's need for entertainment of all types, museums came to house not only unique collections of objects; they also housed the first family-oriented performance spaces, menageries, and, in fact, nearly every type of entertainment available in 19th Century America.