Carl Hagenbeck Circus #2
Posted By thecircusblog on March 29, 2012
This an original photo of a “Tableau Wagon” 1905. Sorry for the quality of this photo, it is the best I could do with my photo shop.
Great comment Bob. Thanks.
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thecircusblog
My name is Ivan M. Henry and I am the 4th generation of a circus/show business dynasty. I hope you enjoy the blog.Comments
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Ivan,
I’ll have to do some asking around but I’m pretty sure this is one of the series of tableau cages that was built in the late 1880’s. There were completely solid on one side and just had bars on the one side that would be open in the menagerie.
Bob
This wagon is mislabelled. It is a cage wagon built in 1916 for Barnum and Bailey Circus. It was one of a series of cage wagons built in that year and sometimes referred to as the column cage wagon as all of the 6 or 7 in the series had corner columns of some sort. A feature of this series is that there were cage bars on only one side of the wagon. This allowed for the other side to be viewed in parade as a tableau wagon.
It is mistaken as a Carl Hagenbeck cage wagon because in the early 1930’s this wagon was taken from the RBBB circus and sent to the Peru Winter Quarters mid-season as excess equipment when the RBBB circus was not doing well that season.
RBBB purchased the American Circus Corporation in 1929; including the Peru Winter Quarters.
It survives at the Circus World Museum in Baraboo, WI