Sad news coming out of British Columbia as today marks the end of one of North America's great wax museums. The Royal London Wax Museum will close its doors for good as an unfortunate lease dispute has ended the relationship the museum has had with the owners of the historic Canadian Pacific Steamship terminal building. Due to seismic upgrades needed on the building, the museum had to vacate the premises, but the expense of temporarily moving and then rebuilding the tableaux proved too costly. They also were unable to secure a long term lease in the building, even if they could have found the money to rebuild. The museum owners looked for other suitable locations, but they could not find any.
The figures will move into storage, and hopefully a solution will be found. However, the future does not look bright that the Royal London Wax Museum will ever reopen.
Visit the Royal London Wax Museum website while it is still up here.
Tags: Royal London Wax Museum
This breaks my heart, Bob. I never got to see this museum, either, and this absolutely breaks my heart. The pain I felt when the Movieland closed is back in full force.
ReplyDeleteIt's gonna take me some time to recover from this. Quite some time indeed.
Bob -- if you have any photos of the tableau in the Royal London, especially from any visits you may have made there, please send me as many as you can. I'll even happily pay you for the trouble, and send a CD for them if necessary.
ReplyDeleteHow will they store the figures? God, I hope they'll be somewhere safe, not in some rat-infested warehouse where they'll rot. Wonder if they'd let me in to take photos when they get them stored away? Doubt it, though. Probably box 'em up for good.
Sigh ... that crack you hear all the way from the eastern seaboard is my heart breaking.
I never visited the museum, so I don't have any personal photos. I do have some guidebooks, postcards etc. From the museum, but they're not all scanned yet. When I have time, I'll start scanning them. You might have to remind me if it takes too long.
ReplyDeleteWhere did you get the pictures/info on the RLWM in Phoenix? Found your site on google, interesting. My grandfather (passed away now) was the GM of that museum and I spent much time in it as a small child so those pice were very cool to see.
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