PERU, Ind. – A place where the world’s greatest circus performers seem to live on forever appears to be walking a financial tight rope.

Help from the public is being sought to pay for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in repairs needed at the International Circus Hall of Fame.

The hall of fame is inside a roughly 10,000-square-feet, 40-feet-tall wood-sided barn once used to make and repair wagons and tents used in circuses at the site and elsewhere.

Enough money is now in hand to replace a rotten main beam and wooden rafters supporting an upper wall of the facility. The cost of the repair is about $4,200, said Bob Cline, treasurer of the not-for-profit facility east of Peru in northern Indiana.

However, the tab will grow if construction workers find other forms of rot inside the wall or roof. “We don’t know how far it’s going to go,” he said.

The cost estimate for a new roof, if necessary, is $70,000.

Cline, a former circus clown and trainer of tigers, said the rotten beam was discovered in December after the wall began moving with the wind.

A temporary frame was put in by a local contractor to support the wall and keep it from collapsing under the weight of snow on the roof until the permanent fix is completed.

Cline said all 54 windows put in the structure in 1991, when the hall of fame moved from Florida, are also rotten and need replacing.

The hall of fame includes displays of costumes along with pictures and stories about the circus performers like Emmett Kelly and Gunther Gebel-Williams.

“They were so good at it they became household names at their time,” Cline said.

In 1892, the site became sort of a village for circus performers, who went there during the winter to purchase or have repaired equipment before the next summer events season. They also went there to enjoy time off the road and practice new routines.

There was a barber shop, restaurant, hospital, post office and other commercial establishments on the grounds to meet the needs of performers and their families during their stays. The performers also appeared in circuses on the site before paying audiences. “It was a city all by itself,” he said.

Cline said the barn occupied by the hall of fame was used to make and fix circus wagons on the lower level and tents in the loft. There were three other similar-sized barns on the property.

Two of them burned down in the 1930s while the other barn once housing elephants, lions, tigers and hippopotamus for various circuses is still standing.

That barn, which needs a new roof estimated at $125,000, contains old circus wagons in a rotation for display inside the hall of fame.

Cline said wings running the entire length of the hall of fame building on both sides will also need replacing at some point.

The property also contains an 80-feet-long corn crib that needs a new roof, a more than 100-feet-long wagon shed and a gate house.

Cline said all five of the buildings are on the National Registry of Historic Places. 

The gate house was the main office for five different circus organizations and main entranceway for people going to the circuses on site.

“This was like Grand Central Station. It’s just utterly mind boggling the activity that was going on in that building,” he said.

A new heating and air conditioning system and new windows are currently going in at the gate house with help from a grant.

The goal is to turn the gate house into a research center for people to look at archives not available for viewing in the hall of fame.

Cline said the glory days came to an end in 1944 when the property was purchased and turned into a farm. “It was the longest running circus winter quarters in America,” he said.

The property remained a farm until it was acquired for the hall of fame.

Cline estimated the cost of all the necessary repairs at $500,000 to $1 million.

He said the brunt of the funding is going to come from grants, with the most recent ones being for historic preservation. Cline said donations are accepted on PayPal and GoFundMe.

Checks are also accepted and can be mailed to: The International Circus Hall of Fame, 3076 E. Circus Lane, Peru, IN 46970