Collection Highlights
Castle Garden, New York City
1859
1972.13
Oil on canvas (relined)
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Museum Collections
Luce Center
Bulls and Bears: The Great Wall Street Game
Title
Bulls and Bears: The Great Wall Street Game
Date
1883
Medium
Cardboard, wood
Dimensions
board: 14 x 22 x 1/8 in. ( 35.6 x 55.9 x 0.3 cm )
box: 15 1/2 x 12 x 2 in. ( 39.4 x 30.5 x 5.1 cm )
Description
Board game with box, board, instructions, playing cards, paper money, eighteen wooden playing pieces, and one spinner; box with lithographed image of a bull and a bear dressed as gentlemen carrying canes in front of a bank; box cover inscribed, "BULLS AND BEARS/ the GREAT/ WALL/ ST./ GAME/ PATENTED/ 1883/ McLOUGHLIN BROS NEW-YORK;" rectangular board (folds in three) with blue and red spaces marked "RISE" and "FALL" in a semi-circle above the names of eight stocks and commodities with an image of a bull and a bear shearing a sheep at the top, images of brokers reading stock tape in the bottom corners, and brokers with a bull and a bear in the top corners; labels on outside of board inscribed, "Color Game/ Bulls and Bears.;" 175 playing cards, star-shaped spinner and eighteen natural wooden playing pieces.
Credit Line
The Liman Collection
Object Number
2000.728
Marks
lithographed: on box cover: "BULLS AND BEARS/ the GREAT/ WALL/ ST./ GAME/ PATENTED/ 1883/ McLOUGHLIN BROS NEW-YORK"
lithographed: board label: "Color Game/ Bulls and Bears."
lithographed: inscriptions on board: "RISE/ FALL/ RISE/ FALL/ RISE/ FALL/ RISE/ FALL/ RISE/ FALL/ RISE/ FALL/ RISE/ FALL/ PACIFIC MAIL/ COTTON/ LAKE SHORE/ WESTERN UNION/ WHEAT & CORN/ NORTHWEST/ ERIE/ PETROLEUM"
Gallery Label
The financial panic of 1873, the worst before 1929, inspired this board game, in which the Bulls and the Bears - the speculators - are depicted fleecing the sheep - the public. The gameboard imagery is derived from cartoons by Joseph Keppler and Frederick Burr Opper satirizing robber barons Jay Gould, W.H. Vanderbilt, and Russell Sage, which appeared in the illustrated weekly magazine "Puck." This is one of the rarest of all nineteenth century American board games.
Due to ongoing research, information about this object is subject to change.
