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Grosjean's Noah's Ark

A 1901 light-and-motion show in a small Ohio museum that predates animatronics by decades

Grosjean's Noah's Ark

In the James E. Grosjean Room of the Allen County Museum in Lima, Ohio, the docent flips a switch, the lights go out, and a filmstrip narration starts: light glows through stained glass, a dove crosses the scene, and the giraffes join the procession into the ark. Grosjean — undertaker, shoe salesman, inventor — built it in 1901; the Pan-American Exposition turned it down, and it went on to fill windows at Marshall Field’s and Macy’s.

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