Click here to subscribe today or Login.
By CASEY JONES caseyj@leader.net
Sunday, March 16, 2003 Page: 1B
WILKES-BARRE – If you were lucky enough to have a nickel in your pocket, a
world of weird awaited you in downtown Wilkes-Barre in 1891.
Everything from sword swallowers and snake charmers to sea lions and seals
paraded across the stage at the Wonderland Theater on South Main Street in the
early 1890s.
The population of the Wyoming Valley was exploding then, as a flood of
immigrants came to work the coal mines. Wilkes-Barre was ground zero.
Photographs from the late 1800s show horse-drawn trolleys crossing the
covered bridge on Market Street. Restaurants, hotels and other businesses
surrounded the Public Square and branched down cobblestone side streets
teeming with horses and wagons.
There was a music hall in Wilkes-Barre, and theater troupes, circuses,
marching bands and vaudeville acts were common in that era. But tacky
entertainment was harder to come by.
According to a history of the Wonderland written in 1951 by Wilkes-Barre
resident Henry G. Hines, Wilkes-Barre got a little weirder after Max C.
Anderson came to town and turned a building at 53 S. Main St. into a theater.
“Wonderland was a place many an old Wilkes-Barrean, in his youth, shelled
out 5 cents on a Saturday afternoon to gaze wide-eyed at many freaks and
oddities,” Hines wrote.
The theater opened Feb. 2, 1891, with a bearded woman, tattooed persons and
Prof. Irving’s Punch and Judy puppet show on the bill.
And it thrived. Anderson increased the seating capacity to nearly 1,000 in
the summer of 1892, according to newspaper accounts.
Through 1894, the Wonderland was a one-stop spot for all sorts of oddities.
There were dwarfs and giants, fire eaters and contortionists, and people
who walked on glass, nails and hot coals.
Jo-Jo the dog-faced boy, and Laloo, the boy with two bodies and one head,
performed here. So did Prof. Dufrane, “The Human Anvil”; Musilla, the
Iron-Headed Man; and a guy who danced on sword blades.
Despite Hines’ contention about young Wilkes-Barreans in Wonderland, there
probably weren’t many kids in the crowd. Though tame by today’s standards,
such entertainment “may have been considered inappropriate for children” of
that era, said Dr. Paul Zbiek, a Kings College history instructor and area
historian.
When Anderson sold the furnishings and skipped town in 1894, the theater
got even tackier, and kids surely would have been shown the door.
In 1895, according to Hines’ account, the Wilkes-Barre Record newspaper
reported that police arrested performers at the Wonderland for dirty dancing
and singing inappropriate songs.
A year later, the “Museum of Art For Men Only” had a three-day run. Hines
did not detail what the show entailed, or why it closed.
Vaudeville acts, minstrel shows, operas, hypnotists and female
impersonators followed. And failed.
The curtain closed for good at the Wonderland on Feb. 17, 1900, after a
three-night run of “O’Hooligan’s Masquerade.”
Soon, stages would be replaced by movie screens in theaters across the
country.
And acts like the ones Max Anderson brought to Wilkes-Barre? As time
passed, they weren’t worth a wooden nickel.