The Great New York Aquarium

The official New York Aquarium was opened at Castle Garden, in Battery Park (the southernmost tip of Manhattan) in 1896. It was the earliest continuously-operating aquarium in the US. It remained in operation at Castle Garden until 1941, and was reopened at Coney Island (where it remains today) 16 years later.

This advertisement is for a rival operation, the Great New York Aquarium at 35th Street and Broadway. It was opened in 1876 by William Cameron Coup (the former business manager of Barnum's Circus) and an animal dealer named Henry Reiche.

P.T. Barnum popularized the aquarium in the US, after seeing how popular there were in England on his trip there in 1855. The following year, he opened one at his American Museum; one opened in Boston in 1859, which Barnum took over a few years later.

The Great New York Aquarium was not a long-term success. According to Coup's book on his aquarium and circus adventures, Spangles and Sawdust, it was terribly expensive transporting the white whales, sea lion and other creatures - never mind the cost of keeping them. There were 42 fresh and salt water tanks to maintain. Furthermore, he and Reiche argued over whether to open the Aquarium on Sundays (Coup didn't want to, Reiche did). They decided to resolve their differences by flipping a coin. Whoever won the coin toss would take over the Aquarium and its satellite operation at Coney Island.

Reiche won the coin toss. Coup doesn't tell us anything more (this is in fact the last sentence in the book) but presumably the Aquarium did not last long after that. By 1880, Henry Reiche, working as an "Animal and Bird Importer," was living in Hoboken, New Jersey [Henry Reiche household, Hoboken Ward 2, Hudson, NJ; #443/781, Series T9, Roll 786, p. 209].

Image from the NYPL Digital Gallery.

Sources

Coup, W.C. Sawdust and Spangles: Stories and Secrets of the Circus. (Chicago, 1901).
Kisling, Vernon N. Zoo and Aquarium History (2001), pp 155-6.
Popular Science (July 1899), p. 362.