Building The Circus Empire
His brother Otto died unexpectedly in 1911 and Al died in 1916. It soon was apparent that running two circuses was more than the remaining brothers could handle. So on March 29, 1919, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus debuted at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The posters declared, "The Ringling Brothers World's Greatest Shows and the Barnum & Bailey Greatest Show on Earth are now combined into one record-breaking giant of all exhibitions!!"
Alfred T. Ringling died in 1919 and Charles took over the management and brought the circus to winter quarters in Sarasota and seven years later, Charles Ringling died in 1926, leaving John to manage the empire.
In 1927 Ringling moved the winter headquarters to Sarasota, Florida, where he and his wife, Mable, had been spending winters since 1909. Property was bought from the city government and shows were put on during the winter for the first time. Mable and John bought bay front property from Mary Louise and Charles N. Thompson, another circus manager who interested all of the Ringlings in land investments at Sarasota. A 30-room mansion inspired by the Venetian Gothic palaces, was designed by New York architect Dwight James Baum, built by Owen Burns, and completed in 1926. It was named, Ca' d'Zan, "The House of John" in Venetian dialect. Later a museum was built for their art collection. He and his brother, Charles, were instrumental in the modern development of Sarasota. John soon became one of the richest men in the world. His circus travels took him all over Europe, and he established a collection of Baroque art. He also acquired a large collection of work by Peter Paul Rubens, called cartoons.
In 1929, John Ringling bought the American Circus Corporation, which consisted of the Sells-Floto Circus, the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus, the John Robinson Circus, the Sparks Circus, the Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, and the Al G. Barnes Circus from its owners, Jerry Mugivan, Bert Bowers, and Ed Ballard, for $1.7 million. With that acquisition, Ringling owned every traveling circus in America.
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Famous quotes containing the words building, circus and/or empire:
“A building is akin to dogma; it is insolent, like dogma. Whether or no it is permanent, it claims permanence, like a dogma. People ask why we have no typical architecture of the modern world, like impressionism in painting. Surely it is obviously because we have not enough dogmas; we cannot bear to see anything in the sky that is solid and enduring, anything in the sky that does not change like the clouds of the sky.”
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“The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall.... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn’t do if your life depended on it.”
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“On 16 September 1985, when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died.”
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