The Gettysburg Cyclorama: Mystery of the South End (episode 270)

Transcript

Music

Jake:
[0:05] Welcome to Hub History where we go far beyond the Freedom Trail to share our favorite stories from the history of Boston, the Hub of the Universe.
This is episode 2 70. The Gettysburg cyclorama Mystery of the South End.
Hi, I’m Jake.
This week, I’m talking about one of the most audacious artistic endeavors of the 19th century, Starting in 1880 for audiences of veterans schoolchildren and everyday Bostonians streamed into a cavernous castle like building on Tremont Street in the south end to witness the closest thing to virtual reality that existed at the time.
The building still exists though a series of renovations have rendered it much more ordinary and less palatial than it was back then.
The painting still exists too and it still offers an immersive experience for visitors that blends reality with art but not in Boston anymore.

[1:03] The building was known as the cyclorama and it was purpose built to hold the painting which was also known as the cyclorama Together. They commemorated the turning point of the bloody civil war that had ended two decades earlier.
But before we talk about Boston’s Gettysburg cyclorama I just want to pause and say thank you to Susan L our latest Patreon sponsor who joined at the incredibly generous William Monroe Trotter membership here.
I appreciate Susan and all our loyal listeners who support the show financially.

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Now it’s time for this week’s main topic.

[2:40] When you walk down Tremont Street in the south end, it’s easy to miss the Boston Center for the Arts building at 5 39 Tremont near the corner of Tremont and Clarendon from the street. The building is pretty nondescript.
It appears to be two stories, but it’s tall enough that I believe you.
If you said it was three, the building has a brick facade with arched windows and light beige stone outlining the main entrance way.
I always think it would fit in nicely with the blocks of buildings on Comm Ave across from the Agganis Arena on the Bu campus, entering through that stone flank doorway, you pass by the box office and restrooms, then climb a few stairs and see a single cavernous room.
It’s 127 ft across and perfectly circular with exposed brick and duct work on the outside walls and generous windows and a massive skylight bathing the floor below in sunlight.

[3:36] The first time I ever went inside, it was for a craft fair.
And then again, years later, for a former coworkers wake, It seems to be more commonly used for theater performances, art shows, weddings and political rallies.
President Obama even held a fundraiser there in 2011.
Out in front of the building, a roughly triangular brick plaza is used for outdoor dining.
A couple of kiosks and occasionally by street vendors revealing that the lot itself isn’t quite square, only the shape of the lot and the building sitting on.
It seem unusual and only the name of the building, the very round sounding cyclorama Hence at the buildings carry us past.

[4:21] The oddly shaped lot as a result of the five way intersection out front where Berkeley crosses Tremont Street just as Warren splits off from it as a 1991 B C A site study for a new theater annex that was never built.
Explains this strange collision of street grids is descended from the earliest roads and railways that crossed the salt marsh that existed here before the back bay was filled in.

[4:46] Four transportation lines through the marsh, Washington Street, Beacon Street, the Boston and Providence Railroad and the Boston and Albany railroad along which the turnpike was to run established the basic orientation of the neighborhood streets.
The playing out of these alignments would eventually result in the BCS irregular block at the five way intersection.
The earliest filling meaning landfill making the back Bay neighborhood started near the neck.
Chama and Tremont streets continued the basic lines of Washington Street with Dover or East Berkeley Street perpendicular to them.
The bend of Tremont Street at Berkeley reflects Washington Street as it came off the neck to turn towards the center of Roxbury.
The alignment of Berkeley is perpendicular to Beacon Street with Warren Av running parallel to beacon, other streets off Tremont run perpendicular to its new angle and intersect with Columbus and Huntington’s Avenues straddling the Boston and Providence rail line.
Now the Southwest Corridor Park.
Thus, when the south end blocks were laid out over time by the Boston Water Power Company, an odd shaped block was created and it’s often it’s such anomalies in the urban pattern that public buildings and squares arise.
The odd shape made for difficulties in developing a straightforward row house block and the prominent position made it attractive for public oriented uses.

[6:14] As building began. Much of the B C A block in the surrounding area was owned by famed East India merchant John Lowell Gardner, father in law of Isabella Stewart Gardner.

[6:27] In 1864, he developed the four story Victorian Row House on Warren Avenue.
But the attractiveness of the block for other more intensive uses soon became evident.
The next year, the Tremont Estates Factory building was constructed on the corner of Clarendon a Montgomery Streets for the Smith Organ company.
During the 18 seventies and eighties, the south end was a major focus of organ and piano forte manufacturing at the center of the block.
The Moody and Sankey Tabernacle was dedicated in 18 77 seating as many as 6000 people for daily revival meetings, a Handel and Haydn society performance or the festival of choral societies.
The Tabernacle was replaced in 18 84 by the feudal castle like cyclorama, the new cyclorama building was designed by architects Charles Amos Cummings and William T Sears who designed the new building for Old South Church when it moved to Copley Square.
After the 18 72 fire.
Today, the round main section of the building that they designed is hidden behind a fairly ordinary looking facade along the street front.
But at the time, it was anything but ordinary, the massive cylindrical building in the middle of the block was topped with arrow loops and Crennel ations looking like nothing so much as a castle keep.

[7:51] They’re not visible from Tremont Street today. But if you turn your back on the cyclorama and walk about a half a block down Hanson Street, you can still look back and see the medieval ornamentation around the top of the circular section of the building.
Though it’s mostly hidden by the modern facade when it opened, the cyclorama building had one of the largest domes in the country, second only to the U S Capitol Building, outfront along Tremont Street, two towers flank the main entry gate that was only missing the drawbridge, as you might have guessed this was no ordinary factory or office building.
The cyclorama building was designed to house a single massive painting portraying the battle of Gettysburg.
And when I say massive, I mean it, The canvas was some 42 ft tall 377 ft long designed to be hung on the wall of a round room and viewed from the very middle.
The style of painting was known as a cyclorama and like I said before, it was about as close to virtual reality as you could get in the late 19th century.

[9:02] Cyclorama were painted with vivid three dimensional details.
So it appeared that the viewer could look for miles in every direction.
And they usually included a carefully landscaped foreground that made the painting appear to blend seamlessly with a life sized diorama in front of it.
I’ve had the opportunity to see two different 19th century cyclorama xas one was a cyclorama of the battle of Gettysburg, which appropriately hangs at the visitor center at the Gettysburg battlefield, which I visited about 10 years ago.
The other was at the Atlanta History Center which I saw when I was down there for work in January At 49 ft by 358 ft.
It’s just about the same size as Boston’s Gettysburg Cyclorama and it also portrays a civil war battle, the Battle of Atlanta.

[9:53] It was originally commissioned in Milwaukee in 1886, then displayed in various northern cities before finally being reinstalled in Atlanta itself in 1892.
When I visited the Docents had fun pointing out how easy it had been for the Atlanta owners to recast a union victory as defeat by repainting a few flags and uniforms to show the boys in blue, deserting the field.
They also pointed out how the painting has since been returned to its original more accurate glory.
Today, it hangs in a special cyclorama Wing at the Atlanta History Center complete with a fiberglass diorama in the foreground, seamlessly blending with a 360 degree painting giving the viewer, a real sense of standing on the battlefield.
I’ll include a few pictures in the show notes, you can see how effective the illusion was.
But even in the era of IMAX movies and Oculus VR Gaming, a good cyclorama can be incredibly immersive.

[10:53] Cyclorama paintings were big business in America and Europe in the 1880s.
And on this side of the pond, civil war battles were one of the favorite subjects.
The first was of Gettysburg displayed in Chicago starting in 1883.
Following its commercial success, more seem to pop up every day.
Shiloh Vicksburg, Chattanooga Bull run the monitor and the Merrimack Lookout mountain and finally Atlanta.

[11:24] No other work could match the success of Chicago’s Gettysburg cyclorama though.
So instead of trying to beat it, a group of investors hired the artist who created the Gettysburg cyclorama in Chicago to create three bigger even more perfect copies.
Starting with the one that would be displayed in the South end when it was done.
Visitors at the Tremont Street, cyclorama pay an admission fee of 50 cents.
A 50 page guidebook was available, but I’m not quite sure how much of an up sell it was inside. There were maps of troop movements on the battlefield.
A summary of the importance of the Gettysburg battle rosters of union units that were present some press clippings that I’ll quote elsewhere.
And a biography of the artist explaining how the cyclorama was created.

[12:14] The author of this great work of art was born in Paris in 18 46.
From his earliest years, he showed such a remarkable natural aptitude in art matters that his father, Felix Philippoteaux himself, an artist of great merit, gave him instructions in the first elements of art painting, At the age of 16, Paul Philippoteaux received instructions from Carbonell and Leon Cochin with both of whom he was a favorite pupil, while studying at the Ecole Des Beaux are the school of fine art.
Sorry for my French pronunciations. He obtained several medals and other high honors.
He is today among the foremost of the painters of Paris. Whereas paintings in the salon are so highly esteemed that his fame is fast becoming worldwide.

[13:05] An ad for the opening of the Gettysburg Cyclorama that ran in December 1880 for quoted Philippoteaux on his role in the family, Cyclorama business and how it brought him to Boston.
My father and myself executed the famous defense 24 D S A on exhibition for the past 12 years in the Champs Elysees in Paris.
The immense success of which it is paid 1500% induced me to paint the following.
Cyclorama Xas taking of pleasure to the Turko Russian war and the passage of the Balkan.
Both an exhibition at ST Petersburg, the Belgian Revolution of 18 30 the attack in the park 18 30 both exhibited in Brussels, the Battle of Tel El Kebir on exhibition in London, the Derniere Sortie in 18 70 at the Crystal Palace.
In order to paint the battle of Gettysburg, I spent several months on that battlefield two years ago, consulted the official maps at Washington and obtained from Generals Hancock Doubleday and others details by which I have represented this greatest American battle as it really took place.
I consider this cyclorama the greatest work of my life.

[14:22] When Philippoteaux says that he spent months studying the battlefield. He wasn’t kidding.
The subject of the painting was chosen to be Pickett’s charge.
A frontal assault ordered by Confederate General Robert E.
Lee on July 3rd, 18 63 the third day of the battle When co host America Nikki and I took a horseback tour in 2013.
It quickly became clear that Lee’s position was too far back from the crest of the ridge to see the terrain that he ordered his men to take Of the 12,500 rebel troops who took part in the assault.
Nearly 9000 were killed, wounded or captured, the insurrectionist invasion of the North was turned back and Lee was never able to stage such an ambitious offensive again, for the centennial of the cyclorama in 1980 for Kathleen Georg and Wendell Lang published an article about the photographer who accompanied Philippoteaux to Gettysburg and the journal military images which helps us understand the scale of the research they performed there.

[15:30] In 1882.
The 36 year old French painter Paul Philippoteaux visited the United States in anticipation of depicting the Battle of Gettysburg on canvas and interviewed survivors of that battle to gather information By April of 1882.
He made arrangements to visit the Battlefield itself to make sketches and familiarize himself with the topography and landscape on arriving.
He would be given an in depth tour of the field by the local resident and guide William Holdsworth, who also arranged for a platform to be erected behind the bloody angle from which a series of photographs could be taken to provide a panorama of the field of the third day’s fighting.
The photographer who did the work was 32 year old William H. Tipton.
Tipton used a wide angle lens that could capture a third of the panoramic view from the tower at any given time and a very large format camera.

[16:26] For each third of the circle, he took three frames, one focusing on the foreground where the battle was fought, one focused on the middle distance and one on the horizon layered together.
These views would allow Philippoteaux to render the entire scene in incredible detail.
The article continues The views seen that spring day by Philippoteaux Holdsworth and Tipton were recorded in a series of 10 glass plates.
The artist used the photos as a landscape base on which you can superimpose the drama of Pickett’s charge.
With the exception of some post battle structures and minor landscape changes the scenes very close to that of July 1863.

[17:12] Incredibly, Lang and Georg point out the detail in the photographs allows us to pinpoint when they were taken nearly to the day.
The photographs reveal a battlefield relatively unchanged.
19 years after the event, modern development of avenues and monument ation was just then beginning in the fall of 18 81.
The board of directors of the Gettysburg Battlefield Memorial Association had authorized the opening of an Avenue to connect the northern end of the Taneytown road with little round top along the Union battle line.
In March of 1882, they purchased 1100 locust fence posts to support a steel wire fence lining this new Hancock Avenue.
And by 12 April, they were being set at a lively rate.
The fence posts sans wire can be seen in a number of the Tipton views and they serve to date. The photograph for the fencing project was complete by the end of April.

[18:12] I couldn’t turn up much detail about what Philippoteaux studio would have looked like.
But I’ll include a photo in the show notes of a diorama at the Atlanta History Center, Illustrating the studio where they’re cyclorama was produced.
It shows a large cylindrical building where the canvas hung on the outside and inside of that scaffolding on railroad tracks allow the artists to climb and reach any distant corner to paint the details.
A photo of Philippoteaux at work shows him on a similar scaffold.
So maybe his studio was set up. Similarly, the article concludes Philippoteaux returned to France with his photos and began working on the painting with his associates using the Tipton views as a guide to landscaping and perspective.
His first representation of the battle was displayed a year later in Chicago.
After consultations with military officers and veterans of the battle, the artist prepared another painting with revisions suggested by these gentlemen.
The result was the Boston version of the Gettysburg cyclorama.

[19:19] Advertisements for the December 22nd Grand opening of that Boston version starting appearing in the local press in the early winter of 18 80 for calling the cyclorama building the Mystery of the south end, On December 21, for the Boston Sunday, Herald reported on a sneak preview of the cyclorama for the press held the day before.

[19:43] For some time past residents of the South end and persons who had occasion to pass the corner of Tremont and Montgomery streets where the Moody and Sankey Tabernacle once stood have been mystified as to the use to which a strange fortress looking building was to be put. When finished.
Yesterday, the mystery was solved. The building was erected expressly for the exhibition of the cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg.
And yesterday afternoon, the painting was presented to the view of a few ladies and gentlemen and members of the press.
The building is large and substantial and could readily accommodate 20,000 persons.
It is of solid brick and iron and is fireproof.
It is circular in shape but is ornamented by the turgid walls and towers constructed after the manner of the old feudal castles.
Its external appearance is striking and beautiful and its solidity and simplicity.
Entering the building through the central arch on Tremont Street.
The visitor passes to the right and along a winding passageway which proceeds upward until he finds himself on an elevated platform from which you can see the painting to the best possible advantage.

[20:56] The globe reported on the same sneak preview with a bit more of a focus on the viewing experience, on the side of the Moody and Sankey Tabernacle corner of Tremont and Dover Streets has been erected, a large circular brick building in it will be on exhibition tomorrow.
The cyclorama of the Battle of Gettysburg Entering the building and ascending a short flight of winding stairs.
You will find hard work to convince yourself that you’re not standing on the top of cemetery ridge in the very center of the position occupied by the troops of the Northern Army.
On that memorable day in July, nearly 22 years ago looking over the brow of the hill, on which you’re standing, you see spread out before you, the battlefield.
So vivid and lifelike on the ground at your feet lie the broken cannon guns bayonets.
And so finally, is the work done that a person cannot tell where the artist ends.
And the painting begins in an article about Civil War, cyclorama Z Yoni Appelbaum expounds on the effectiveness of the props in the foreground.

[22:06] What most astonished observers though was the Diorama which began near the edge of the platform and ended at the painting 45 ft away.
Hundreds of carloads of earth were covered in sod and studded with vegetation.
Then topped with the detritus of the battlefield.
Shoes, canteens, fences walls, corpses near the canvas.
These props were cunningly arranged to blend seamlessly into the painting.
Two wooden poles painted on the canvas met a third leaned against it to form a tripod, a dirt road ran out into the diorama.
A stretcher borne by two men, one painted and the other formed of boards had its poles inserted through holes in the painting.

[22:54] Along with the hyper realistic painting and the diorama that helped blur the bounds of reality.
More artistic works would be added to the Tremont Street, cyclorama over time, about a year after the cyclorama opened to the public.
Another series of large scale paintings by Paul Philippoteaux was added to the lower level of the building below the viewing platform.
These were anchored by a giant canvas called the Uprising of the North which Philippoteaux said that he created as an answer to those who questioned why he a Frenchman was so dedicated to American ideas of Republicanism.
According to a review in the globe on February 14, it represented the rush of troops to Washington in response to Lincoln’s call.
There are a lot of moving parts to this highly stylized picture, but I’ll include both a photo of it and a full description from the globe article in the show notes this week.

[23:53] Civil war veterans regularly visited the cyclorama forming an important audience and source of revenue, they came on their own.
And as part of groups, individual visits were often mentioned in promotional materials for the exhibit.
Usually with some sort of comment about how the old vets teared up as they pointed out where their units had been during the battle or even believe they recognized individual comrades emerging from the smoke and dust.
The group visits tended to be mentioned in news items instead of ads like a January 1885 trip by a few dozen members of the Gettysburg Veterans Association, perhaps more surprising was a visit that was reported on that July, a delegation of ex Confederates from the General Robert E Lee camp of Confederate veterans visited the cyclorama recently and the blue and gray exchanged fraternal greetings.
Large numbers of veterans are visiting the battle of Gettysburg this week, Those visits fell in the midst of a busy summer for the Cyclorama which was heavily advertised for Decoration Day in May for the 22nd anniversary of the battle in July three for visitors in town for July four and following the death of President Grant in August.

[25:15] About two weeks after Grant’s funeral, the globe again reported on veterans visiting the cyclorama An old soldier was asked, where was your company located?
Just over there? Said he wait a moment till the smoke blows off and I’ll show you a young lady faded away the other day.
When asked what made her faint, she said, oh, it was the smoke. It was so thick.
It always makes me sick to breathe smoke and especially gunpowder smoke.
Another says the artist painted that gun altogether too long major.
Which gun do you refer to? Sir?
Why that one lying close to that old tree? Well, sir, I bought that gun myself down two levels the day before we opened.
Is it possible then I give up, I can’t tell which is painted and which is not, a small boy said to his papa say, papa, let’s get down off this platform and go over on that hill.
We can see better and get out of the crowd of anecdotes like that.
Yoni Appelbaum writes such stories allowed their tellers to laugh away their own unease blinking in the bright daylight outside, still uncertain just where the stonewall ended and the painting began.
They were claimed their shaken faith in their own senses by telling tales of the truly credulous.

[26:42] By the end of that 1st June, the investors who had backed the cyclorama venture were getting paid back.
A brief press report noted that they would get a 4% dividend on July one.
Luckily, for the investors, when veterans groups weren’t packing the cyclorama they had another reliable source of gate revenue.
One that a lot of historic sites in Boston still rely on today field trips.

[27:10] Another globe article, this one published in January 1886 reports that half price tickets were available to teachers and their classes numbering 25 or more.
There were also special lectures geared towards school aged audiences twice a day which were more or less guaranteed to leave the students enamored with history.
During the past year, many teachers of our public schools have taken their classes to the cyclorama building for the purpose of studying in the most intelligent manner possible.
The greatest and most important battle of modern times, the battle of Gettysburg, all were of one opinion that teacher and scholar in one hour’s time studying this wonderful work of art and listening to Mr Thomas’s hourly descriptions adapted to the understanding of the youngest child.
Get a clearer idea of the great battle than from weeks of study of textbooks and written histories.
It supplements so admirably the written history. The Children upon returning from a visit to the cyclorama take up the study of all history with renewed zeal and interest.

[28:19] For a little over three years. The proprietors of the Gettysburg cyclorama had audiences of Boston schoolchildren, civil war veterans, history lovers and thrill seekers all to themselves, but it couldn’t last forever.
On February 6th, 18 88 a second grand scale historical cyclorama opened up in another massive castle like building about three blocks and less than a quarter mile away down Tremont Street, located on the site of today’s animal Rescue league.
The new spectacle had an important local connection, The scope of the new Bunker Hill, Cyclorama was described in the 1889 Guidebook, Boston, the Metropolis of New England.

[29:05] The canvas upon which this picture is painted is 400 ft in circumference and 50 ft in height.
Thus containing an area of 20,000 square feet or nearly one half acre.
Not only does this picture give the beholder a vivid and lifelike view of America’s greatest battle, but also enables them to view the territory in and around Boston as it appeared 100 and 20 years ago.
Boston when containing only 16,000 inhabitants, East Boston or as it was formerly called Nodules Island, South Boston, formerly Dorchester Heights, Chelsea formerly win a summit Cambridge Roxbury, Medford Malden and all the adjacent towns are represented in this immense picture.
In connection with the cyclorama has shown the diorama of the Boston Tea Party, which is as faithful representation as can now be made of that startling episode.
The vessels as here shown are copied from contemporaneous pictures and are believed to give a correct idea of the style of ships in use 100 years ago.
It is needless to give any description, the pictures tell their own story.

[30:21] This new cyclorama followed the winning formula of the original big round building elevated viewing platform in the middle of a large scale painting and a diorama in the foreground to enhance the virtual reality effect.

[30:35] A story in the globe. The day after the new Cyclorama opened gave a vivid description of the view as portrayed from the redoubt on that bloody June Day in 1775, the silvery glimmering surfaces of the winding Charles and Mystic rivers.
The cattle grazing upon the Zephyr swept eminences.
The brown little frame houses nestled close together as if they too knew that the time estimated cohesion and a spirit of standing by one another.
These are a few of the pastoral beauties of Boston and vicinity more than 100 years ago as shown in the great masterpiece of Kowalski, the Battle of Bunker Hill to be seen at the cyclorama which was yesterday open to the public at 401 Tremont street, Boston, Charlestown, Roxbury, Dorchester, Cambridge, Somerville, Mauldin Everette without great black factories, without bricks and mortar, without towering store houses and jammed thoroughfares.
Boston and all the towns just named, Lying Peaceful under the summer skies.
We stand in Charlestown on the summit of Breed’s Hill where the Great battle was fought.

[31:48] Again. It is the morning of June 17, The farmers are here from all the New England states.
They’re untrained but brave and full of patriotic fire.
10,000 British troops trained soldiers, all are ready for the fray. It must come.
The Americans have born all they can from Cambridge Common under command of Colonel Prescott, 1200 men in March to Bunker Hill and had been advanced to Breed’s Hill as it was considered that this position will be better suited for the defense.
The picture of the cyclorama shows the scene at the foot of Breed’s Hill at the moment of the beginning of the third attack by the Britishers.
The spectator is supposed to be standing in the redoubt with our gallant men who bloodstained, half naked Hungary had withstood two previous onslaughts.
Charles Town is on fire.
The Bunker Hill, Panorama was new and hot and Gettysburg was now old and boring.
The proprietors of the original Tremont Street, cyclorama held on for a few months but gate revenues kept dropping.

[33:00] Before long, they were ready to pack up the Gettysburg painting and ship it off to a city where it might bring in some dough while also looking for a replacement painting.
So their specialized building wouldn’t sit empty.
Starting in October 1888 advertisement stated that the Gettysburg Cyclorama will positively close January one of the following year.
On December 23, the globe reported on the uptick in visitors who wanted to see the cyclorama while they still had a chance, crowds of people and excursions daily from surrounding cities and towns is the report from the old cyclorama on Tremont Street, Realizing how short the time now remaining before January one, the closing day of this great exhibition, all those who have neglected a visit to Gettysburg seemed determined to improve the last few days and the platform is constantly full of interested and astonished visitors and one often hears the remark, it’s too bad.
The company are going to take this great work away.
It should be a permanent exhibition in Boston and like remarks.

[34:07] But the management believe that change is the spice of life and in making the change at this time, believe that the public will be satisfied and pleased with the new subject.
What the name of this new subject is, they will not state at present but assure every Inquirer it will be one of great merit equal in every respect to the present exhibition, in fact, will be different from any canvas before shown full of interesting surprises and foreground effects In light of the circumstances.
The investors would have to tighten their belts until a new cyclorama could start selling tickets again.
The future was too uncertain to allow themselves to take a profit.
With the globe. Reporting on October one, the directors of the Boston cyclorama Company have voted that in view of changing the present cyclorama for a new one which will be ready for exhibition honor about the middle of February dividends be for the present discontinued and the cash on hand and future receipts after deducting the current expenses, taxes and rent be constituted a sinking fund for the purpose of paying for the new subject and any repairs or other expenses that may be deemed necessary before reopening.
With that, a fitting replacement was selected. The Gettysburg painting was shipped off and the proprietors managed to turn the space over in just about three months.

[35:37] From the farm fields of southern Pennsylvania. The audiences would now be transported to the rolling hills of the little Bighorn Valley.
Yellow in the late summer heat.
The new cyclorama would depict the battle that took place between combined bands of Lakota, Arapaho and Cheyenne and the seventh cavalry regiment as led by Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer.

[36:00] On March 22, the Boston Globe reported on this new installation in great detail, straight from the noisy dusty un poetic life of the city into the heart of the rolling western plains and the most remarkable battle in the annals of warfare.
This is what the Bostonian who wins his way toward the former cyclorama of Gettysburg on Tremont Street.
Can now do the marvelous painting depicting Custer’s last battle which succeeds the other favorite picture was formally placed on exhibition yesterday afternoon, a select company of invited guests including representatives of the press being accorded the privilege of viewing it.
While this memorable fight may not be of such national importance as Gettysburg or Bunker Hill.
Yet there hangs about it. Such an intense flavor of thrilling romance that is well worth reproducing on canvas from an artistic standpoint.
The picture compares favorably with the others that have been shown here as a mirror of what life really is on the western plains.
It is eminently a success and as it was written at a time when the official U S policy toward Native Americans was still genocide.
The description of the painting in this article is so violently racist by modern standards that I can’t bring myself to repeat it here.

[37:26] Subject matter aside, a 2005 article about The Little Bighorn cyclorama by Charles Marc Entous.
And the Journal military images reinforces how similar the process of creating different dioramas could be.
It was made under the supervision of Dr Ernest Pierpont of Munich Germany who was assisted by his New York staff, Charles Able Corwin of Chicago, Theodore Wendel and G A Travers working on the foreground figures of the huge painting, E J Austin of London assisted on the Indian villages and distant figures.
Mm Salvador Meg Ernst Gross of Paris and Emil Merlot painted the landscape.
Thus no fewer than seven artists worked on it for six months.

[38:14] It is said that Pierpont visited the battlefield on the Little Bighorn before work was begun and secured photographs, interviewed some of Reno survivors and studied official reports.
After the Little Big Horn, the cyclorama space would be repurposed for cyclorama as of Jerusalem and of a Hawaiian volcano.
Along with many more.
The Little Bighorn painting was exhibited in Detroit for years where Michigan could claim Custer as one of their own.
When the crowds gradually thinned, it was taken down and eventually lost today.
Nobody knows what became of it.
Three of the four Philippoteaux Gettysburg would be lost, destroyed or terribly damaged.
A National Park service article says the Chicago painting was eventually sold and was in private ownership until its donation to Wake Forest University in Winston, Salem, North Carolina.
The painting has survived though it’s in desperate need of restoration and a permanent home.
Two more versions of the Gettysburg cyclorama were painted and exhibited including one shown in Denver, Colorado.

[39:26] One of these was cut up for uses tents by Native Americans on a Shoshone Indian reservation after the turn of the century.
The fate of the other painting is unknown that seemed to be the fate that awaited the Boston version of the Gettysburg cyclorama as well.
According to a 1991 National Park Service Administrative History, the Gettysburg cyclorama was exhibited in Newark, New Jersey, New York City, Baltimore and Washington D C.
And the decade after the exhibit closed in Boston, profits were way down but the paintings still brought in enough money to make it worthwhile to keep moving it to new cities.
Unfortunately, outside forces tank the company and left it unable to keep track of its most valuable asset.
In the 1904 retrospective, the globe reported that the corporation that owned the Gettysburg Cyclorama did not fare so well.
After the panic of 1893, the same financial crisis that drove recent podcast subject Joseph Lee into bankruptcy.

[40:31] The last official return made there was in 1893 and was not of an encouraging nature.
At that time, Joseph M Smith was president, a Joseph Kingsbury treasurer and they together with CM Newell and Francis C.
Foster formed the board of directors at the commissioner’s office.
It’s understood that the company became greatly involved in litigation.
In 1894, and 96, still other reports which were filed by E.H.
As temporary clerk showed no change in the corporation’s affairs from that time on no reports have been made and the company appears to have dropped out of sight.

[41:15] The painting also dropped out of sight after about 1894 or so.
The Gettysburg cyclorama Building went on strong even after cyclorama paintings went out of fashion, According to the same 1991 BCA site study that I quoted from before, the cyclorama Space subsequently became used as the casino for roller skaters and dancers, the rough riding and artillery drill, Boston Auditorium, a Spanish American War exposition, a bicycle arena, the workout ring for heavyweight boxing champion John L Sullivan.
And in 18 99 the new England Vehicle Transportation Company Garage, where Albert Champion sold sparking ignition parts on his way to inventing the A C sparkplug.
In 1922, the Gardner Estate sold the building to the commercial flower exchange which replaced the original dome with a skylight.
According to a Boston Landmarks Commission study, the original castle like Facade was removed in 1922 to make the building appear more appropriate for the Boston Flower Exchange.
The dome was replaced with a conical ceiling with a huge skylight in the middle.
Much later when the Boston Center for the arts was moving into the space.
Buckminster Fuller designed a skeletonized steel lighting grid that was suspended beneath the skylight and supplements its illumination.

[42:41] First photography and then motion pictures gradually took the place of cyclorama Zin the American Imagination.
By 1890 for the Boston, Gettysburg the most profitable and artistically regarded.
Cyclorama had been lost By 1904. Cyclorama as a whole were pretty much a lost art.
But then on new year’s day, the globe reported on an unexpected discovery and an oversized wooden crate and the forgotten back corner of the lot where the spark plug was about to be developed.
$100,000 worth of deserted and uncared for property. It lies in a vacant field in the heart of Boston.
The neglected object is the famous cyclorama paintings, the Battle of Gettysburg that at one time attracted thousands of Spectators and for which the Great French artist Paul Philippoteaux was paid $100,000.
It lies in a long box like shed built especially for this purpose in a vacant lot at the corner of Warren Avenue and Clarendon Street where it has remained for 10 years or perhaps longer subjected to all conditions of weather.
Rains have poured down upon the inadequate storage shed and snows of several winters.
The heat of summer suns and like elements have made it doubtful if the once valuable painting packed in the long box is even in fair condition.

[44:09] The author of the article thought it necessary to remind readers what the cyclorama was and how popular it had been, how quickly we forget.
The article then describes everything in the painting had been through since the cyclorama Company went bankrupt a decade before.

[44:27] The box is a little more than 50 ft long and it’s perhaps four ft wide and about the same height with a pitched roof.
It is all roughly made at best and is hardly a fit place to store a painting of the dimensions and value of the battle of Gettysburg.
It is set at the office of the George Frost Company corner of Tremont and Clarendon streets that the long storage box made its appearance upon this vacant lot in a somewhat mysterious way.
The company’s offices overlooked a lot and one morning, the clerks and others in the office discovered that during the previous night, the box had been dumped behind the factory.
In fact, it was partly in the back alleyway used by teams and reaching the shipping rooms of the frost factory.
The box was shifted a little to prevent its obstructing the passage way and there it has remained ever since who caused it to be placed.
There is not known nor has anything been paid for the use of that part of the vacant lot so far as can be learned.
The lot itself is said to be the subject of considerable litigation.
It seems probable on close investigation that the 50-foot boxes remained where it lies through the courtesy of some person or persons unknown.

[45:43] It is said that the truck man who brought the box and its contents to the lot never received payment for his work and that he was unable to learn whom to look to for his remuneration.
The box has been on fire two or three times in the years. It is laying on the lot.
One incident of this kind occurred about two years ago and at that time, the fireman played the hose well, all over the box and into it, boards having been removed from the top, the chemical engine was a part of the apparatus responding to the fire alarm and chemicals also were poured into the box.
So it is stated by those who watched the exciting scene, all this it can be seen probably has not helped to preserve the big painting and good condition.

[46:29] The canvas is 50 ft in width and 400 ft in length.
And as it lies rolled up in the box, it makes a role of perhaps 20″ in diameter.
An oiled skin or cloth is wrapped about the canvas and in the box stored with it were muskets and other paraphernalia together with wax figures of soldiers which as many will recall formed a part of the foreground.
These gave the most realistic touch to the scene of the battlefield.
When the great painting was set in position and was on exhibition.
Soon after this rediscovery, an entrepreneurial Gettysburg resident purchased the battered and long forgotten painting with the idea that the tourists who were starting to stream into Gettysburg in the early 20th century would pay to see it as they toured the lanes and fence rows where their fathers and grandfathers had fought and bled.
It was exhibited privately at first in a building just a few yards from Cemetery Ridge, then later purchased by the Park Service and moved into a visitor center on the exact spot where Philippoteaux gazed out from his tower while painting it.

[47:34] According to a 1991 National Park Service administrative history of the Gettysburg Battlefield Park.
The Cyclorama was housed in a building on Baltimore Street in Gettysburg in 1913, in 1936 the advisory board on National Parks historic sites, buildings and monuments declared the cyclorama to be of national significance and recommended that it be secured by the National Park Service.

[48:00] The National Park Service acquired the Gettysburg Cyclorama on February 21.

[48:07] The cyclorama was restored under the direction of NPS Conservator Walter J Nickel.
It’s in 1960 installed in the park’s new visitor center, the cyclorama building.

[48:19] The structure was dedicated on November 19, The new facility which also housed the park’s administrative offices was the park’s first visitor center.
It opened just in time for the 1963 centennial of the battle, which saw the park’s highest visitation to date.
40 years later, it was given a thorough overhaul and moved again.
According to another park service article initiated in 2003, the Gettysburg Cyclorama underwent a $13 million dollar rehabilitation project.
Conservation specialists from Poland Associates repaired unstable sections of the canvas and restored original details lost during the numerous repair and preservation attempts on the painting.
The cyclorama was moved to the new Gettysburg National Military Park Museum and visitor center and placed in its own unique viewing auditorium, whether restored skyline and foreground.
The conserved painting and restored foreground was unveiled to visitors on September 26, during the Grand Opening of the Visitor Center, that’s where co host American Nicky and I saw it in September 2013.
Just a few months after that first National Park Service Visitor Center had been demolished to return the site to its 18 63 appearance.

[49:41] If you listen to this and you want to see 1/19 century cyclorama There are about a dozen left in Europe, a handful in the Middle East and one in North Korea.

[49:53] If you want to see one and you don’t want to leave the United States, you have two options.
You can go see the battle of Atlanta at the Atlanta History Center or you can go to the Gettysburg National Military Park to see Paul Philippoteaux is greatest work.
Consider the greatest cyclorama perhaps of all time to learn more about Boston’s Gettysburg cyclorama Check out this week’s show notes at hub history dot com slash 270.
I’ll have photos of the cyclorama buildings, impressive facade ads and promotional materials for the Gettysburg cyclorama and pictures of the Bunker Hill. Cyclorama is building.
I’ll include links to maps and pictures that demonstrate the cyclorama perspective on the Gettysburg battlefield.
I’ll also link to all the period sources that I quoted from and the modern papers that helped me make sense of how the cyclorama was created and what happened to it after it fell out of public view.

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Music

Jake:
[51:42] That’s all for now. Stay safe out there listeners.