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 9
Heather Shelton: You’re looking at a fragment of floral wallpaper that shows bouquets of pink carnations, red roses, and blue daisy-type flowers. The background was probably white at one time and is covered with paisley-shaped basket forms. This piece of wallpaper is from one of the Peale’s previous lives, perhaps from the City Hall period 1830-1875. You might say, that looks like something I’d see in my grandmother’s house! Admittedly, wallpaper isn’t for everybody, but it’s made a come back in recent days as a “peale” and stick design motif that’s popular on home design shows.
Believe or not, wallpaper is actually a perfect reflection of how the American economy evolved and even the beginnings of the middle class!
Heather Shelton: In the 18th century, wallpaper was very, very expensive, only gracing the walls of the homes of elite Baltimoreans. But, by the late 19th-century, everybody had wallpaper, and it really served a couple of functions: It gave people options for making their homes special! You could find patterns with anything under the sun: flowers, stripes, grand French landscapes, women carrying baskets, ribbons and bows! WHATEVER! It covered unsightly cracks in the walls. It kept drafts out!
Heather Shelton: Wallpaper was THE home style trend that many more people could afford in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Between the 1850s-1870s, there were thousands of advertisements in Baltimore newspapers that mentioned wallpaper and paper hangers! We’re happy that early renovations didn’t PEALE away this historic wallpaper fragment.
