Take an audio tour of The Peale, Baltimore's Community Museum and the oldest museum building in the United States! Listen to WYPR's Aaron Henkin recount the fascinating stories that surround this historic building. Includes 16 stops.
Robert McGill Mackall's 1933 illustration (pictured) in the Peale Gallery on the first floor shows Rembrandt Peale demonstrating gaslight in this room. It would have been a logical choice, enabling the new technology to be seen from the street below. It is said people would gather on Holliday Street to marvel at the light that came through its windows – they had never seen such bright artificial light!
When City Hall was based in the Peale Museum building from 1830 to 1875, the Second Branch of City Council met in this room, while the First met in the Latrobe Room, the large, skylit gallery on the opposite end of this floor. When the building was repurposed in 1878 to serve as Male and Female Colored School No. 1, this room was divided into two classrooms. Eleven classrooms were created in total, to serve up to 500 students on just the building's first two floors.
You can find out more about School 1 at the Peale in the exhibit on the ground floor and in its audio tour.
