2 weeks Ago By Thomas Weber
For Rochester, 1917 was the year the circus almost didn’t come to town. “The red wagons will come tomorrow,” the Rochester Daily Bulletin said on June 21, 1917. “That dear old institution, old but ever new, the circus comes to Rochester Saturday with a real show.
” ADVERTISEMENT The traveling extravaganza heading for Rochester was the Carl Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus “a circus of novelties, thrills and a whole show of pretty women,” according to the newspaper. This being 1917, the Hagenbeck circus was reportedly reinforced by performers from Europe, where World War I was raging. Hagenbeck apparently operated a zoo in Hamburg before the war, and had since brought his menagerie of animals and people to America.
Included were Miss Dallie Julian “lately of the Follies Bergere, Paris,” who would present “an artistic riding number entirely new to America,” and the “Percheko troupe of nine male acrobats from Petrograd.” Other performers were said to be from Liverpool, Calcutta and Hong Kong. In addition, the newspaper said, “the clown contingent will be the largest ever seen here” and there will be 400 trained animals.
So imagine the anticipation building for this great event. The train carrying the show was expected to travel overnight from Waterloo, Iowa, and set up its 540-foot long tent in the morning. The parade of bands, acrobats, clowns and ferocious animals was scheduled to start at 10 a.
m., with performances under the big top at 2 p.m.
and 8 p.m. Then Mother Nature decided to put on a show of her own.
Heavy nighttime thunderstorms washed out a 240-foot stretch of the railroad between LeRoy and Ostrander, stranding the circus train on, literally, the wrong side of the tracks. The circus still planned to get to Rochester, but the parade and the afternoon show would have to be canceled. As it turned out, repairs took longer than expected, and the train never made it to Rochester in time even for the evening performance.
ADVERTISEMENT “The first section of the train pulled into Rochester shortly before eight o’clock Saturday night,” the Daily Bulletin reported. “The train remained long enough to change crews and then pulled out for Minneapolis.” There would be no Hagenbeck-Wallace circus, with its hundreds of performers and animals, that summer in Rochester.
Luckily, only a month later, the Barnum & Bailey Circus, billed “The Greatest Show on Earth,” was due in town on Saturday, July 21. This huge circus traveled on 89 railroad cars, and included acts such as Signor Bagonghi, “Italy’s comic equestrian”; bears that rode bicycles and walked in roller skates; a couple of dozen elephants; and Ella Schiavoni, “the physical culture expert.” This time, there were no interruptions from the weather.
Saturday turned out to be “the happiest day of the year,” according to the Daily Bulletin. “Boys and girls all the way from seven to 70 by the thousands know that the circus is again in town.” The Barnum & Bailey parade through downtown Rochester featured musicians, wild beasts, acrobats and four-horse chariots driven by men dressed as Roman noblemen.
Later, under the big top, audiences enjoyed the thrills and potential spills, as well as the antics of Prince, a chimpanzee “that is almost human in his clever acrobatic feats.” After a delay of several weeks, all was right again in the summer of 1917 in Rochester. The circus had finally arrived in town.
Thomas Weber is a former Post Bulletin reporter who enjoys writing about local history. ADVERTISEMENT.
