The Greatest Escape in Appleton, Wisconsin

Every year we meet our friends, who live in Northern Wisconsin, somewhere halfway in Central Wisconsin for a good, face to face visit. We’ve been friends for so long that even meeting for 24 to 48 hours gives us plenty of time to catch up. This year, we chose Appleton, Wisconsin, a town with a population of 75,000. It’s amazing the things we don’t know about all the places big and small in our country.

As we walked around Houdini Plaza, we found a statue and a plaque dedicated to none other than Harry Houdini, the great escape artist. We were surprised to hear that he was from Appleton and even more surprised to learn that their history museum’s major permanent exhibit was all about him. Since very few museums anywhere have this type of exhibit I was intrigued to see it.

The museum is housed in a castle that was originally a Masonic Temple and is worth seeing in itself.

The second floor of the building is devoted to the Harry Houdini exhibit. Harry Houdini was born Erik Weisz in Budapest, Hungary in 1874. He and his family emigrated to America in 1878 ending up in Appleton. His father was employed as the rabbi at the synagogue in Appleton and worked there for four years. He was then let go because the congregation felt that he wasn’t modern enough. This was the first home that Erik/Harry remembers and the city of Appleton seems to have adopted him as a native son.

After Mr. Weisz lost the rabbinate position, the family moved to Milwaukee and then New York where in both places, they lived in extreme poverty. As the oldest of seven children, Erik AKA Harry felt responsible for helping to support his family. He quit school and went to work doing various jobs and then trying for years to make it in Vaudeville as a magician. He got his first break in 1899 when he was recognized in St. Paul, Minnesota and the rest is should we say, history.

Among Harry Houdini’s quotes the one I found most telling was “My chief task has been to conquer fear.” His wife also said that the main challenge for Harry that enabled him to perform all his life-threatening stunts was to conquer all his fears. He later used his celebrity status to advocate for women’s suffrage and to try to expose fraudulent spiritualists who were prevalent at that time.

The exhibit in Appleton is mostly devoted to memorabilia about Houdini including some of the equipment he used for his stunts. They do this in a hands-on way giving visitors to the museum the opportunity to try it out. In the back of each stunt display is an explanation of how Houdini managed to accomplished these feats often with sleight of hand and other magician tricks. Altogether it was a very entertaining exhibit and good to go to with children because of the hands-on nature of much of the exhibit. Should you find yourself in Central Wisconsin, this exhibit is certainly worth a visit.