Harry Houdini - Artifacts/Libraries/Museums

Artifacts/Libraries/Museums

Houdini's brother, Theodore Hardeen, who returned to performing after Houdini's death, inherited his brother's effects and props. Houdini's will stipulated that all the effects should be "burned and destroyed" upon Hardeen's death. Hardeen sold much of the collection to magician and Houdini enthusiast Sidney Hollis Radner during the 1940s, including the Water Torture Cell. Radner allowed choice pieces of the collection to be displayed at The Houdini Magical Hall of Fame in Niagara Falls, Ontario. In 1995, a fire destroyed the museum. While the Water Torture Cell was reported to have been destroyed, its metal frame remained, and the cell was restored by illusion builder John Gaughan. Many of the props contained in the museum such as the Mirror Handcuffs, Houdini's original packing crate, a Milk Can, and a straitjacket, survived the fire and were auctioned off in 1999 and 2008.

Radner loaned the bulk of his collection for archiving to the Outagamie Museum in Appleton, Wisconsin; but pulled it in 2003, and auctioned it off a year later in Las Vegas, on October 30, 2004.

Houdini was a "formidable collector," and bequeathed many of his holdings and paper archives on magic and spiritualism to the Library of Congress, which became the basis for the Houdini collection in cyberspace.

More than half of Houdini's archival estate holdings and memorabilia, however, were willed to his fellow magician and friend, John Mulholland (1897–1970). In 1991, well-known illusionist and television performer David Copperfield purchased the entirety of Mulholland's Houdini holdings from Mulholland's estate. These are now archived and preserved in Copperfield's museum in a warehouse at his headquarters in Las Vegas. His museum there contains the world's largest collection of Houdini memorabilia, and all told, preserves approximately 80,000 items of magic memorabilia of Houdini and many other famous practitioners of the arts of magic & illusion – including, among others of Houdini's stage props and material, his famous "Water Torture Cabinet" and "Metamorphosis Trunk". The museum is not open to the public, but tours are available by invitation-only to fellow magicians, scholars, researchers, journalists, and serious collectors.