The Great Circus Showdown of 1888
When the Sells Brothers’ traveling circus arrived in Seattle, it brought a sprawling, multi-ringed spectacle that promised to transform the town's public thoroughfares into a Roman-style festival.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
As glorious sunshine is to midnight darkness, as the whale is to the minnow, as the Rockies are to a molehill, as the lordly eagle is to an English sparrow, this great show is to all others. The Sells Brothers’ Hippodrome, Three-Ring Circus, Elevated Stage and Five-Continent Menagerie arrives in Seattle on Monday, August 13. The show features a massive array of artists, including Adelaide Cordona, the greatest bareback equestrienne on earth, and the Aar Brothers, the funniest clowns on earth. The event features Roman standing races, monkey races, pony races, and chariot races. Most remarkably, the show includes a pair of giant hippopotami—male and female—for which the owners declined a profit of forty thousand dollars less than thirty days ago. The performance includes three hours of dazzling, fascinating entertainment, including a street parade appearing on the public thoroughfares at 10 o'clock a.m.
“As glorious sunshine is to midnight darkness... this great show is to all others.”
In 1888, the arrival of a massive traveling circus was a rare, monumental civic event that required coordination across the city's infrastructure. Today, while digital entertainment dominates, the logistical ambition of massive pop-up events like Bumbershoot or regional festival tours continues to define Seattle's cultural calendar.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.