It had been several months in the making as the circus left the big top and assembled inside the newly constructed Madison Square Garden. The Barnum & Bailey Circus was a comeback, as New York City residents clamored for tickets inside the arena. Circuses became part of the American landscape as people sought entertainment outside their homes. On March 18, 1881, the Barnum & Bailey Circus, “The Greatest Show on Earth,” debuted at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

Millions of people remember circus parades as they wound through the streets of their local towns. The larger circuses, like the Barnum & Bailey Circus, came in on trains and assembled in parades to get to where the circus would wow residents. Usually, the circus would run for several weeks as people from surrounding rural towns journeyed to see the circus under a big top tent. In the years after the Revolutionary War, there were very few, if any, legitimate entertainment venues where American families could take their kids out for the day. Traveling circuses became an industry as dozens of circuses, including the Cooper and Bailey Circus, emerged as entertainment businesses.

Meanwhile, P.T. Barnum became the most popular man on the planet as he figured out how to get people into his wildly popular museum. Barnum took another oddity of American entertainment, the freak show, a controversial form of entertainment that showcased individuals with unique physical characteristics, and made it his empire in the most famous American city. The Barnum and Bailey Circus combined freak show museums and circus animals for a spectacle that would only be Barnum’s retirement project.