The Briscoe Museum: A New Use For an Old Building (with some additions)--continued

PART 2: The Circus (1942-2002)

The Library with upper floor additions (1943)

In 1941, plans were made to add another story to the front wings of the San Antonio Public Library, making it level with the rest of the facade and the stacks..  This would provide not book, but gallery space to house a special, very large collection of 40,000 items of circus memorabilia donated by local lawyer and politician Harry Hertzberg--willed to it after his death in 1940 (Herzberg also donated 800 books, mostly about circuses, but also rare books he had personally owned.

 On the exterior, these additions duplicated those of the ground floor, creating a higher, uniformed facade.  Inside, they expanded the old office space on the third floor to house two spacious exhibition galleries containing highlights from the collection.These galleries were opened to the public in January 1943. A catalogue summarizing their contents was published by the library around the same time.  

Numerous posters and photographs on various circus topics adorned the walls, while an antique ticket wagon, such objects as bull-hooks to control elephants, a coach belonging to the celebrated midget Tom Thumb, and a life-sized mechanical model of a famous 19th-century Viennese Clown filled the gallery spaces.

A scale model of an entire traveling tent show, complete with train cars, the big top, auxiliary tents and miniature performers occupied almost the entire floor space of the second gallery.

 

While regular folks were checking out books downstairs, they could also come up and stroll these galleries.  But for scholars and circus aficionados, this large research collection offered much more, and it attracted many people from all over the United States to consult its holdings.  It may have attracted some tourists too: the first part of San Antonio's Riverwalk, virtually adjacent to the building, had been opened in 1941, at just about the same time when construction of new addition was inaugurated.

 

During the period of the Carnegie Library and the newer addition until the late 1940's, public libraries were segregated, but African Americans (called "Race Patrons" at the time) were permitted into the Circus galleries as individuals and school groups during designated hours Thursday evenings. This would become moot when the library system was quietly integrated in the late 1940's.

 

The dual function of the library/circus galleries continued until 1967, when the library and book collections outgrew the building.  The library moved to new quarters up the block at the corner of Martin and South St. Mary's streets the following year, and 27 years later, as the Central Library to its present location, Ricardo Legorreta's architectural marvel--which in turn was renovated in 2023.

 

After the move, the former Public Library building was taken over by the circus collection, renamed the Hertzberg Circus Museum, still fulfilling the Kampmanns' donation terms for the building, as the collection was still part of the library, and Hertzberg's collection of books were still available there for consultation.

 

More space meant more room for more exhibits, and what had been library public spaces were soon filled with additional pieces from the collection. Most of the two original galleries had been occupied with displays of some of Hertzberg's favorite topics: P.T. Barnum, Tom Thumb and the opera singer Jenny Lind.  Now the available galleries created from reading rooms, children's rooms and the lobby itself, were crammed with all sorts of objects: storyboards  and miscellaneous circus memorabilia along available walls, and display cases. Except for the lobby

Tom Thumb's Carriage and Gentry Brothers Wagon in Lobby: after 1967

up to the balcony, all the walls were painted white. Tom Thumb's coach, a second ticket booth from Gentry Brothers' Circus and other objects now occupied part of the former lobby, with no regard for its art deco origins--with so much stuff along the walls and on the floor, why look up at the ceiling--or even notice wall sconces and matching pendant lights at all?

 

A sculpture of an elephant, once in Harry Hertzberg's garden, stood outside the main entrance.  It was subsequently joined by a twin, contributed by a private donor, and in later years these two flanked the entry.

 

Due to the donation specifically to the library of Hertzberg's collection, the Hertzberg Circus Museum remained under the care of the San Antonio Public library system, and the latter was responsible for its maintenance.  In the 1940's and early 1950's tent circuses, big and small, were still crisscrossing the United States, and bringing a grand spectacle to cities and rural towns alike, wherever there were rail lines.  But by the the late 1960's, things began to change drastically.  For one thing, the public library had expanded to nearly 30 branches all over the city, and allotted funds had to cover them all.  By the mid 1980's, when my daughter and I visited it, circuses as they existed in the days of Barnum, barely still--losing out to Mass Media, so nearly everyone could access a wide range of entertainment 24/7 at home (and particularly in pandemics).  Wild animal acts disappeared with the movement for animal rights and conservation.  Evil clowns in horror films were pretty much making them "family unfriendly." The

Sideshow Items: after 1967

many variously "freaks" of the side shows had become persons with disabilities; sumo wrestlers replaced fat men, and tall people could make fortunes in professional basketball, where they became admired and well-paid celebrities.  Daring acrobats could be Olympic gymnasts or find a home in the glitz and bling of Cirque de Soleil.

 

The San Antonio Public Library staff itself were conservators and disseminators of books, not museum curators, and the Hertzberg Circus Museum was suffering from neglect.  By the time we visited, the museum had become rather grimy and seemed more glum and strangely weird than anything else, with its cold dusty lighting and a circus soundtrack playing scratchily in the background.  We left after ten minutes.  

Hertzberg's will had specified that if for any reason the library no longer wanted it or could care for it, the entire collection be transferred to the Witte Museum. The circus museum was closed in 2001, and everything went to the Witte two years later.  The books and his collection of 500 World War I recruiting posters were absorbed into Special Collections at the main branch of the library.  In its new home, circus items are seldom exhibited, except those two outside elephants, which now, brightly restored, stand outside the Naylor Pavilion facing Broadway.

 

After its closure, the building would remain closed and vacant until 2013.

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The original two-gallery collection and its history was nicely profiled in Memories of San Antonio (which is where most of the photos here come from): https://memoriesofsanantonio.com/2023/01/12/the-famous-harry-hertzberg-circus-collection-opened-in-san-antonio-80-years-ago-today/

 

The circumstances of the museum's closing are briefly related in the Library Journal, New York, Vol. 128, Issue 14 (Sept. 1, 2003), p.22.

 

The libraries' integration is chronicled by Paula Allen, "Library's Integration Quietly Rolled Out in 1949, San Antonio Express-News, February 25, 2024, p.A4.

 

A nice catalogue of the Museum in its original two galleries, entitled Circusana, a Guide Book for the Harry Hertzberg Circus Collection, was published by the San Antonio Public Library c.1943.  It can be accessed online at: https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015031946430

 

Jonathan Dewbre's brief video, taken during the Hertzberg's heyday can be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpBL5TfNJqk.  It gives nice views of the miniature circus.

 

In 2018, PBS's American Experience featured a two-part series on the history of the Circus in America.  While no longer available at PBS, it can be purchased at Amazon.com either for streaming or in DVD form.