Gilbert's Museum & Menagerie

Market St. just east of Montgomery  | map |

Opened: This venue operated by Ferdinand Gilbert was running by December 1863. It was a second floor space above the Occidental Market on the north side of the street just east of Montgomery. That's Gilbert's in the center of this July 4, 1864 photo. Thanks to Nick Wright for sharing this on the San Francisco History Facebook page. He notes that on the left it's the Hibernia Bank Building at 8 Montgomery. The Taber Photo Studio would be in the building about 15 years later. The future site of the Hobart Building is on the right.

John Lumea has noted that the attractions here were similar to the wild beasts and "human oddities" offered by John "Grizzly" Adams from 1856 to 1859. He had been in a basement on Clay St. but then moved his "California Menagerie" to the second floor of the Commercial Exchange Building at Clay and Kearny. Adams stayed there until 1859, later calling it the Pacific Museum. See more about Adams at the bottom of the page.

After Adams moved out, the space at Clay and Kearny became the home of Gilbert's Melodeon, a venue later known as the Olympic Theatre. In 1863 Gilbert was also involved in what had been the Union Theatre on Commercial St., calling it Gilbert's New Idea Melodeon. 

As John Lumea has noted, Gilbert seemed to be always involved in more than one theatrical venture at a time. This new Museum on Market St. was noted in an item John found via the website of the California Digital Newspaper Collection in the December 29, 1863 Marysville Daily Appeal:  

"Gilbert’s Museum and Menagerie, San Francisco, has been thrown open to the public, and a vast assemblage has visited it." 

Although the venture was running by December 1863, John notes that the first proper ads didn't start appearing until May 1864. 

 

A May 8, 1864 ad in the Daily Alta California. Thanks to John Lumea for locating it. Much of his research about Gilbert appears in "The Emperor Was Not Amused," his article for the Emperor Norton Trust.

In the 1865 city directory it's listed as "Gilbert's Museum, N. side of Market bet Montgomery and Sansome."  

Gilbert was also offering taxidermy services at his location on Market St. Thanks to John Lumea for locating this ad that ran in the Daily Dramatic Chronicle from March to May 1865.

 

Closing: May 1865. Gilbert then moved his collection to The Willows, a resort at 18th and Mission. John Lumea notes: 

 

"Gilbert moved the whole kit and caboodle of his Museum, including both live and taxidermied animals, to The Willows when he took over the lease there in June 1865."

 

A May 30, 1865 ad from the Daily Dramatic Chronicle that was located by John Lumea and added as a comment to a post on the San Francisco History Facebook page. He notes: 

 

"Sunday May 4th for the date of the re-opening of The Willows was a misprint; the planned date was Sunday June 4th. Ultimately, the re-opening took place a week later, on Sunday June 11th."

 

 

An item appearing in the May 30, 1865 Daily Dramatic Chronicle. Thanks to John for locating it. 

 

As far as the "re-opening" and "the former Proprietor" mentions in the Chronicle ad and article, John notes that Gilbert had been involved in The Willows perhaps beginning in 1863, when he was also running Gilbert's Melodeon and the Union Theatre/New Idea:

 

"During this same period, it appears that Gilbert was leasing and running some, maybe even all, of The Willows, a popular resort just outside the city, located in an area that now is in the Mission District, around 18th Street between Valencia and Mission. 

 

"In fact, Gilbert and his family were living in the second floor of a house on the grounds, which burned down on 12 January 1864. The timing of the fire couldn’t have been worse for Ferdinand Gilbert, who had just launched his latest project two weeks earlier." 

 

That "latest project" that John refers to was the Museum on Market St.

 

 

More about John Adams from John Lumea:

"For a few months [in 1856], a hunter and trapper named John Adams had been exhibiting his collection of trained bears and other animals in a basement location... on Clay Street, billing the exhibit as the 'Mountaineer Museum.' 

"Initially, Adams — later celebrated as Grizzly Adams — had 'removed to' the larger, better situated California Exchange [at Clay and Kearny] as a brief stepping-stone in advance of taking his 'menagerie' on tour on the East Coast. But, he wound up staying for three years, styling his new location the 'Pacific Museum.'

"By 1859, Adams's San Francisco enterprise had started to go sideways. Adams's health was failing. There was a dispute over the ownership of the animals. And, the Museum was losing money. In early August 1859, Adams moved his animals from the California Exchange building to temporary quarters in the Mechanics' Pavilion, on Montgomery between Post and Sutter.

"Later that month, perhaps out of financial desperation, Adams made two of his animals — a buffalo and one of his bears — available for gruesome buffalo-and-bull and bear-and-dog fights near Mission Dolores — an episode that cuts hard against the grain of the myth of Grizzly Adams as a gentle animal lover. (See the Daily Evening Bulletin's 18 August 1859 write-up here.)

"In January 1860, Adams put his animals on a ship and accompanied them to New York, in the hope of joining forces with P.T. Barnum once there. This Adams did — in the process, selling his animals to Barnum. Adams died in October 1860."

Thanks, John! This information appears in John's Emperor Norton Trust article "The Emperor Was Not Amused."

 

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