Dixon boxing Kangaroo - Wonderland Dme Museum Ticket
A ticket to see Dixon, The Boxing Kangaroo, in February 1894 at the Wonderland Dime Museum.
Before radios crackled and movies talked, the city had inexpensive thrills around every corner. Ten cents bought a ticket to the dime museum on Wisconsin Avenue. Jacob Litt’s Mammoth Dime Museum packed the sidewalks with people who came to munch caramel corn, sip lemonade and be fooled for an hour. Posters promised “hundreds of curiosities,” and the barker out front did most of the selling with a basso profundo shout.
If the dime museums were cozy, the rooftops were breathtaking. Daredevil athletes were called human flies, and they turned Downtown into a live cartoon. Harry Gardiner, the most famous of them all, climbed walls as if they were ladders, scaling buildings in plain clothes while crowds craned their necks and shouted encouragement from below. Men like F. S. Sutherland put on heart‑stopping shows like climbing City Hall in less than seven minutes. Sometimes the crowds got so big they nearly crushed one another. City fathers learned fast that outdoor stunts could be dangerous in more ways than one.
The shows mixed the silly and the scary. A “monster whale” was once floated up the river and moored near the Wisconsin Avenue bridge. The whale’s huge mouth was pried open and 25 patrons at a time could sit in salon chairs—until the rancid smell made the crowds back off in a hurry. The rotting whale had to be taken away, but for a few days it made the river dock into a city wonder.
Getting Goosebumps
Other performers made their living in clever ways: a “Living Head Without a Body” used mirrors and a special table to create the illusion, and an underwater “man fish” impressed everyone simply by staying down for five minutes. In a music hall on Broadway a spiritualist told stories about raps on tables, cold breezes, or messages from across the veil—all delivered in a spooky voice. People loved getting goosebumps between the juggling and magic tricks. Amateur performers parlayed their talent into a job with one of the traveling vaudeville circuits. Musicians, jugglers, comedians and other stage stars brought cheap, noisy entertainment to a new town each week. Milwaukee averaged 300 plays, burlesque troupes and vaudeville shows a year.
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Trained animals turned into headline acts. Boxing kangaroos, taught to fight with tiny gloves, drew howls of laughter when they kicked their opponent squarely in the chest. Bozo, the “mind‑reading” dog from Ripley’s Believe It or Not could add, subtract, and guess a person’s age with cards. The zoo and vaudeville theaters mixed the exotic and the absurd: trained animals, acrobats, and novelty acts that made families talk about what to see next Sunday. On the city’s northeast side was Wonderland, a 33-acre amusement park located on the river. The urban trolley lines shuttled passengers to water slides, roller coasters, carousels, and inventor George Ferris’s massive wheel all on the site of today’s Hubbard Park.
Raucous Cheers
Baseball on Donkeys at Borchert Field
An advertisement for baseball played on donkeys at Borchert Field.
Milwaukee’s ballparks specialized in raucous cheering for shows like donkey baseball. Players rode stubborn donkeys and tried to play the game with comic rules. Kids loved it, and grownups loved it more—especially if it raised money for a good cause. Before a baseball game Borchert Field’s seats and bleachers were filled to capacity to watch the national pastime. On summer evenings the park’s bandshell presented bands and orchestras while families spread blankets and listened until the stars came out.
On Main Street you could find other treats. The penny‑candy stores smelled like taffy and chocolate, and kids bought root beer or a licorice stick for a penny. The ornate Butterfly theater played pictures with Valentino, Chaplin, and Clara Bow. Because audiences read the title cards and watched the actors’ faces, everyone understood the story without sound. After the show, men in pin‑striped suits and straw hats stopped at a beer garden, while the women—dressed in layers because modesty was the rule—slowly drifted home.
Kids with candy goo on their faces, families crowding the Orpheum for a musical show, or old men sitting in the shade arguing about tomorrow’s weather seemed to be everywhere. Summer smelled of buttered popcorn, roasted peanuts, and fresh beer from the breweries. Life moved more slowly and everything felt softer at the edges. Even the outrageous attractions—the spiritualists and the monster exhibits—fit into a world that loved being surprised.
That was the charm of it all: full of simple joys. People sat on porches at night nibbling peanut brittle and chatting while streetlamps flickered on and the strains of a brass band closed out the day. For a few hours, residents forgot their chores and spent a nickel or dime for some of the fun.
