Today marks the half-century anniversary of the burning of Barnum Hall, originally built as the Barnum Museum of Natural History, named for founding trustee and benefactor Phineas Taylor “P.T.” Barnum (1810-1891). On this night in 1975, an electrical malfunction in the second floor’s refrigeration unit caused Barnum Hall, home to the Department of Biology and a collection of zoological and geological memorabilia, to catch fire. Reports of smoke from the Quad hilltop had begun around 3am and by the second firetruck’s arrival, the building erupted into a blaze. Firefighters from eight towns had to be dispatched. In the days after, the Tufts Observer noted, the building continued to smolder.
On the other end of the Quad, from the third-floor residence of Carmichael, Carl Manikian (E72, G74, D77) captured the sight on camera. Reflecting on the night, Manikian remembered:
“I awoke to the noise of sirens, looked out the bedroom window and saw flames in the distance at the end of the Quad – Barnum was in flames! I grabbed my Minolta SRT101, usually loaded with Kodachrome or Ektachrome slide film and snapped the attached pictures.”
Manikian’s photos, alongside his other documents and ephemera glimpsing into student life during the 1970s, would later be donated to Tufts Archival Research Center in the year of the fire's 40th anniversary.
These photographs capture the building’s dramatic end. Yet, as Manikian observed in his reflections, fires were far from an anomaly in the press coverage of the Medford campus. Barnum Hall’s destruction marked the thirteenth documented fire in eleven years on Tufts University property between 1969 and 1975.
Yet, Barnum’s burning remains the most infamous fire on campus. The story has been rehearsed within the Tufts’ mythos, notably setting the scene for the “second” death of the university’s beloved mascot, Jumbo the elephant, and “rescuing” of his remains into a peanut butter jar. While the most conspicuous losses included Jumbo’s taxidermied figure, which once stood in the central exhibition hall, alongside Barnum’s wooden desk and a select menagerie of his other stuffed animal specimen, it was the Department of Biology that lost decades of data records, laboratory equipment, and research specimen. Although no humans died, Biology alumni and faculty recalled two decades’ worth of studies taken by the fire, including 155 gerbils, 50 mice, and a colony of cockroaches.
In fact, most of the Barnum memorabilia from the building’s namesake had long been removed from the premises into the University Archives, then located at Wessell Library. At the time, Russell Miller (1916-1993), Tufts University’s first appointed archivist, reassured student journalist Julie Salamon (J75) that he anticipated only ten percent of materials from the Barnum collections were lost. Fragments of Jumbo’s tail and hide had been already removed from the mounted taxidermy and stored in the University Archives. Salamon concluded for the Tufts Observer, "Barnum and Jumbo files [in the archives] is enough material to keep any tale-teller busy for a long time."
The original Barnum Museum of Natural History was designed by architect John Phillip Rinn (1837-1905), who also oversaw the construction of the Goddard Chapel and Metcalf Hall. Tufts President Elmer Capen (1875-1905) envisioned the project as part of a larger campaign to expand the university’s research and learning infrastructure. He persuaded P.T. Barnum to fund the facility with a dedicated natural history exhibition hall. A relentless entrepreneur and mass-entertainment personality, Barnum thought establishing an eponymous university museum would enshrine his circus and menagerie into the canon of natural history. On the eve of its opening in 1884, the Tuftonian Magazine proclaimed that Barnum would “be equaled by few museums in the country either in point of size or elegance.” To enhance its pedagogical value, Barnum donated a further $40,000 to build two new wings on the Museum, which would house biological laboratories and lecture halls.
Correspondence between P.T. Barnum and Dean John Marshall (1823-1901) notes that moving the stuffed elephant from the local railway station in Northern Somerville up to College Hill proved to be an onerous effort. Jumbo’s 1,500 pound body struggled to pass through Barnum Hall’s doors, allegedly requiring the removal of the stone steps, brick flooring, and the door frame. In addition, despite discussions to “thoroughly” fire-proof Jumbo upon arrival, Barnum wrote to Dean Marshall in the fall that they had, “lost the directions [Marshall] gave about the ingredients and the application of them to Jumbo’s skin so as to be fire proof and the proper color. Will you please mail me at once all that is necessary on this subject and oblige.” See correspondence from Collection on P.T. Barnum, MS002.001.004.00011.
Today, Barnum Hall has been decommissioned as a natural history and biological lab laboratory and now hosts a variety of university programs, including the Tisch College of Civic Life and SFMA Multidisciplinary Studio. The interior walls of the front entrance lobby have been repainted, according to the renovation project manager in Tufts Now, “fire-engine red.”
References
Ferber, Tom. "Ten years of fire on the Hill: Tufts ravaged by fires," Tufts Observer, 1 December 1978. https://newspapers.tufts.edu/?a=d&d=TTO19781201-01.1.27&e=------197-en-20--1--txt-txIN-fire------
Ferguson, Laura. "A New Beginning for Barnum Hall," Tufts Now, 31 October 2019. https://now.tufts.edu/2019/10/31/new-beginning-barnum-hall