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 5
Jackson Gilman-Forlini: A fun discovery that I really enjoyed was actually when they were restoring the original window frames on the front of the building. The sashes are hung with a counterweight system. When they were removing the old counterweight hardware for restoration they discovered that the pockets in which the counterweights were set, those jams actually had been lined with recycled signs.
Jackson Gilman-Forlini: Basically, sheet metal signs that had been cut, and then fit as a liner for those counterweight pockets. We said, “Well, isn’t that interesting? Why are these metal signs here?” Well, it out that in the night early 1920s, late 19 teens, there was actually a sign fabrication shop that was renting space in the Peale. Basically, renting space from the city for their business.
Jackson Gilman-Forlini: Based on photographic evidence, we were able to determine that those particular windows where we found the sheet metal signs had been closed up in the 19th century, but then were reopened in the 1920s, and coincided exactly with the period when the sign shop was using that space. So we think that actually the signs that were used to line those pockets were recycled by the owners of the sign shop. Who were then basically, reusing the materials that they had on hand to restore the windows.
