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.
When the school finally outgrew the Peale Museum building, it was next occupied by The Bureau of Water Supply from 1887 until 1916. The building was then turned into rental space for shops and factories. These industrial uses so destroyed its interior that by the 1920s, the city was planning to demolish the Peale Museum. But citizens and journalists came together and persuaded the city to save the historic building instead.
The renovations by architect John H. Scarff of "Monuments Men" fame reflect more of the “colonial revival” tastes of the day than the actual aesthetics of Rembrandt Peale’s original museum, which would have been much plainer and simpler in detail.
Scarff took pains to restore the museum’s interior using period materials, including wood flooring repurposed from 1820s rowhouses that were being demolished nearby at the time. The marble floors used in the lobbies and hallway on the ground floor came from the original Enoch Pratt Public Library, and the Siena marble mantle in the Curiosity Shop came from the 1840s Robert Goodloe Harper house.
Part of a nationwide trend, the Peale Museum reopened in 1930 as Baltimore’s first Municipal Museum.
You can hear more about the history of the Peale Museum building from Jackson Gilman-Forlini, Historic Preservation Officer for the City of Baltimore.
