Wax Museum in New York

Lincoln's Haircut Chair.

Many of the exhibits in the Niagara Wax Museum of History date from its opening in 1968 - roughly the same time that the city of Niagara Falls, New York, bulldozed most of its tourist district in an ill-fated attempt at urban renewal.

Some may find the museum's vintage unappealing; we think it's great. Over on the busy bee Canadian side of the Falls nothing would've lasted this long, but here it's safely frozen in time (it's a history museum, after all) offering a view of Niagara Falls glories and calamities that would have otherwise been forgotten, and a roster of tourist celebrities who are nearly all dead.

Devil's Hole Massacre of 1763.

For fans of wax dummies the museum is a treat, with examples ranging from the frighteningly lifelike (Mother Teresa) to the just plain frightening (Mark Twain). The wonky eyes and wild wigs on some of the mannequins suggest the goggle-eyed wonder and hair-tousling power of the Falls - at least that's what we told ourselves.

Owner Doug Brown, nephew of the museum's founder, gave us a quick rundown of the surprisingly large (46 galleries) museum. A local Native American mask with a half-scrunched-up head, he said, was a human who had challenged the gods, "and they got mad at him, so they moved a mountain with his face." When we asked why the museum has a wax dummy of Mother Teresa but not Marilyn Monroe (both visited the Falls) Doug answered that Marilyn "would get touched a lot" while "most people aren't trying to grope Mother Teresa."

Checkers-playing firefighters.

The reason Niagara Falls even has a Wax Museum of History is the Falls, which tumble only a few hundred feet from the museum entrance. Almost all of the museum's exhibits relate in some way to its watery namesake, from the diorama on the Devil's Hole Massacre of 1763 (with many bloody dummies) to the chair in which tourist Abraham Lincoln got a haircut in 1848.

The high-concept "King of Power, Queen of Beauty" display contrasts the Falls' hydroelectric potential with waxy likenesses of Princess Di, Julia Roberts, and the previously noted Mother Teresa. According to Doug, the exhibit replaced a fire station display; its checkers-playing firefighters now sit in another part of the museum, "since it happened around 9/11, as a tribute to the firemen." It is one of the oddest 9/11 memorials we've seen.

"People wonder, what are they doing there?" said Doug of the fireman. "But there is a reason for all of this stuff."