Take a tour of the Peale, Baltimore's Community Museum and the oldest purpose-built museum in America. In this multi-stop tour, you'll hear from experts, historians, and curators who worked on and in the building during recent renovations.
Tour Stop 4
Jackson Gilman-Forlini (00:01): There's a few things that are original. So there're different levels of original, right? So there's original to the building's construction but then there were several renovations that happened throughout the 19th century. Each one of which has by itself acquired significance in its own right. So it is like a palimpsest. With each generation there’s new meaning that’s ascribed into the walls. The earliest period, a lot of the beams, and joists, and the floors, some of the exterior brick walls are original. When we opened up one of the ceilings on the first floor... But we did find the look to be evidence of the original floor joists for the second floor that it had at a later date, been sistered with another newer joist. So it looks like rather than taking up the old ones, at least by 1930, that there was some repair and stabilization of the existing.
Jackson Gilman-Forlini: But then there’s also like the windows for example, are probably not 1814 windows. But they do appear to date to perhaps the first renovation of the building which occurred in 1830 when it was converted to City Hall. Many of the windows did exhibit advanced age. Also, the method of assembling and glazing as well for those windows, is very similar to other 1830s and 1840s era windows that have been found in other Baltimore buildings.
