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Staten Island | Madison Square Garden | Brooklyn
Brooklyn
By 1894, Buffalo Bill Cody expanded the scope of his Wild West show to include more international attractions. The show opened on May 12, 1894 in Ambrose Park, Brooklyn and played to large crowds through October.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, May 10, 1894
EXPERT ROUGH RIDING
Performed by the Indians and Cowboys with Buffalo Bill
These days have returned to Brooklyn, and may be enjoyed at Ambrose Park, or more explicitly, Third avenue and Thirty-seventh street, where the Wild West show of Buffalo William has pitched its tepees and corralled its ponies. There the wonderful west of a few years ago has been revived in all its rugged and romantic splendors. Its plains, prairies and mountain passes, the log cabin of the frontiersman, the wigwam of the Sioux, the burly bison, the pony express, the lumbering treasure coach of the overland route to Deadwood, the Mexican with his lariat, the cowboy with his broncho and the cavalry troops of the United States army; all are there in picturesque grouping... and finally, chief figure of them all, is William F. Cody, ex-scout, ex-colonel and ex-legislator, the handsome, long-haired, mustached and imperialed Buffalo Bill, the object of more hero worshiping by young America than any other character in national history....
The riding of the cowboys, Indians and cavalrymen was as exhilarating as a sea fight. It made the observers' blood tingle and nerves vibrate to see these specimens of hardy manhood sit in saddles or on bare backs and never see daylight under them while the horses plunged and ran like stags before the hounds.
The New York Times, May 13, 1894
DELIGHTED TWENTY THOUSAND
Buffalo Bill's great Wild West Show opened at Ambrose Park, South Brooklyn, yesterday afternoon, in a blaze of glory and amid a shower of ringing coin thrown by the 20,000 people who occupied seats in the grand stands.
Col. Cody had unquestionably in this exhibition surpassed all his former efforts in the show line, and to miss seeing his Congress of Rough Riders of the World, in their most wonderful and daring feats of horsemanship, which, by the way, are perfectly natural, and contain no circus play, is to miss one of the finest educational exhibitions ever given...
The entertainment consisted further of rifle shooting by the celebrated woman rifle shot, Miss Annie Oakley; horse races between a cowboy, Cossack, Mexican, Arab and Indian on the horses of their native lands; an exhibition of the famous old pony express, an immigrant train attacked by Indians on the plains, exhibitions of horsemanship by Riffian Arabs, cowboys, Mexicans, and others; hurdle races, races between Indian boys on ponyback, the battle of the Little Big Horn, illustrating Custer's last stand; the attack on the Deadwood coach and settlers' cabins by Indians; buffalo hunts, a military musical drill, the cavalrymen of all nations, and Col. Cody's wonderful exhibitions of sharp-shooting at glass balls with a rifle while riding at full speed.
The New York World, May 13, 1894
ONLY ONE BUFFALO BILL
The Wild West is no longer a sufficient title for Buffalo Bill's extraordinary caravansary, for it is now lengthened and decorated with the hairy South, the swarthy East and ferocious North. If the twenty thousand people who assembled yesterday in South Brooklyn to welcome Col. Cody expected to see Indians and cowboys only they got more than their money's worth, for this tremendous caravan, which has been moving over the entire face of the earth since we last saw it here, has gathered into its tents every specimen of trained horseman that the world furnishes, and the dramatis personae of the outdoor drama now offers us in its groups a stupendous picture that must remind anybody of those once popular canvases that loved to suggest to us a congress of the nations.
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle,May 13, 1894
WILD WESTERN SPORTS
Sixteen thousand persons went to Ambrose park, at Thirty-seventh street and Third avenue, yesterday afternoon to witness the first performance of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show. The brilliant sunshine and balmy air quickened the appreciativeness of the audience and soothed the savage breasts of the red skinned children of the prairies who have learned to gaze complacently upon the thousands of well dressed scalp locks and regard them as representing so much cash at the box office instead of trophies to be hung in the lodge. It was a most satisfactory opening day to both the audience and the managers. The grounds on which the show is pitched are larger and more thoroughly laid out than any others which it ever has occupied. The cowboy orchestra has toughened the tympanums in the grand stand while the 450 rough riders of all nations came dashing into the areas in companies and assembled for the grand preliminary review. They included 185 Indians and 40 each of cowboys, United States cavalrymen, French, Irish and German troopers, Cossacks and Arabs.
After their various evolutions, came an exhibition of dexterous fancy shooting by Miss Annie Oakley, then a horse race between a cowboy, Cossack, Mexican, Arab and a Gaucho....
The old, old original Deadwood coach, that has been cared for like a baby and preserved in a ramshackle picturesqueness ever since the show was organized, was next brought in, with old John Nelson sitting on the roof behind the driver and popping off the redskins, who circled about in attack, till the cowboys came to the rescue and routed them...
After this Buffalo Bill made a grand entrance alone, and was cheered to the echo. He rode at full speed on his grand looking Kentucky thoroughbred, and cracked glass balls in the air with an off hand pace that made his precision the more wonderful. An imitation buffalo hunt with a herd of ten bison in the arena came next, and then, after an Indian attack on a settler's cabin, the company entered again for the parting salute.
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