What's the most historic building in Baltimore? If we could calculate sheer historical content per square foot, the winner would probably be the Peale Museum at 225 N. Holliday St. Long a showplace of municipal keepsakes, the Peale was itself the scene of much history, having served as City Hall, a public school, waterworks, and a private business. All told, this simple brick structure has lived about nine lives, totaling 188 years and entailing several major renovations. Today, though physically sound, the Peale Museum sits idle, a symbol of our city's plight, and potential.
If you arrived (or came of age) in Baltimore some time in the last five years, you're probably thinking, What museum? The Peale has been dormant since 1997, when then-Mayor Kurt Schmoke closed the heavily indebted system of shrines known as the City Life Museums--the Peale, the H.L. Mencken House, the Shot Tower, Carroll Mansion, and a number of lesser-known sites, some of which have been sold to private owners.
The Peale's oft-told story bears repeating now because the site's prolonged inactivity has been attended by near-silence in the media. Tellingly, the last mention of the museum in the general press was the news, two months ago, that the city had continued to pay the Peale's energy bills for 13 months after service was cut off in December 1999.
The building's very checkered career began in 1813, when it was erected by Rembrandt Peale, son of the famed portraitist Charles Willson Peale and himself a master painter. Dubbed "Peale's Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts," it was the first building in the Western Hemisphere created to serve as a museum. Its early exhibits included portraits of famous Americans (many by the founder) and the complete skeleton of a prehistoric mastodon exhumed by C.W. Peale in 1801.
On June 13, 1816, the Peale notched another first, becoming the first public building in America to use gas lighting. Days later, the Gas Light Co. of Baltimore (lineal ancestor of Baltimore Gas & Electric) received its charter, making the Peale Museum the birthplace of the U.S. energy-utility industry. But the entrepreneurial Rembrandt Peale was no businessperson. He turned the museum over to his brother Rubens, who sold it to the city in 1830 and moved the exhibits to a space on Calvert Street.
Later that year, 225 N. Holliday became Baltimore's first City Hall; by the 1850s, City Council members were already complaining that the building was cramped and dangerous. A new City Hall was designed in 1860, but the Civil War stalled its construction, so the Peale served as the seat of local government throughout Baltimore's most traumatic years. Union forces occupied the city in May 1861; that September, Mayor George Brown and many other civic leaders and legislators were arrested and jailed at Fort McHenry. Brown was released after his mayoral term expired, late in 1862.
The present City Hall was dedicated in 1876, and the Peale was converted into the second home of "Number 1 Colored Primary School," one of Baltimore's first public schools for black students. In 1887, four years after expanding into secondary grades, the school moved to a Saratoga Street site, where Frederick Douglass spoke on his last visit to Baltimore, in 1894; a few years later it was renamed for the great abolitionist. Thus, the present Frederick Douglass High School--now on Gwynns Falls Parkway--traces its roots to the Peale Museum.
In 1887, Peale's brainchild was reduced to a homely utilitarianism, serving the city's Water Board as storage and office space. Its once-proud brick facade was covered with stucco; pipes and ladders were stacked inside. Beginning in 1915, it was rented out to a series of private businesses, including an organ factory, a machine shop, and a sign-painting company. By 1928, it had been repeatedly condemned and was in danger of demolition.
Then came a remarkable and inspiring rebirth: Historians and journalists rallied the public and persuaded Mayor William Broening to restore the old museum to something like its former glory. Off came the stucco, and up went a portico modeled loosely on the original design and a relief sculpture representing Baltimore as a reclining goddess. After two years and $80,000 in expenses, the building was rededicated in 1931, this time as the Municipal Museum of Baltimore.
In 1979 the museum closed for another two-year renovation, reopening in 1981 as the Peale Museum. Many readers will remember its quirky but fascinating exhibits, including "Mermaids, Mummies, and Mastodons," which revisited the building's early history, and "Rowhouse: A Baltimore Style of Living," which traced the evolution of the city's close-knit dwellings. In 1985, the Peale became part of the City Life Museums system. These charming but unprofitable shrines were closed, ironically, in the year of the city's bicentennial celebration. At the time, city boosters bragged of Baltimore's many historic "firsts"--several of which involved the Peale Museum.
In the waning days of the Schmoke administration, the mayor's loyalists cast around for something to slap his name on. They didn't look very far: The title "Kurt L. Schmoke Conference Center" was affixed to the Peale, half a block from City Hall. Sadly, the "center" has never hosted any conferences. The only people using the place are homeless men who crash in its sheltered doorway.
Kathleen Kotarba, director of the city's Commission for Historical and Architectural Preservation, says the recently formed Baltimore Historical Society has expressed an interest in occupying the Peale, and CHAP itself, which had offices in the Peale until it closed, would like to return. One significant but soluble problem is bringing the building into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.
In October, the new Historical Society will host its second annual reception at the Peale. The group's president, Circuit Court Judge John Carroll Byrnes, hopes the event will build support for the museum's revival. It occurs to me that a natural coalition could be created to work on the Peale's behalf, just by convening the successors of all of its past inhabitants: CHAP; the Maryland Historical Society (which inherited the Peale's exhibits); Douglass High; the mayor and City Council; the Department of Public Works (heir to the Water Board, and the Peale's current steward); and, of course, BGE, which might help out with a little seed money, just for old time's sake.
Latest MP3s
jsakowicz
1 comments.
Member since 6/12/2008
Breiefly, in 1978-1980, I was the treasurer at the Peale Museum, when I was just starting my career in financial services at Alex Brown & Sons.
Dennis McDaniel was the museum's director at that time. He was a retired USAF pilot who flew B 52s for SAC during the Cold War.
If I remember correctly, the Peale Museum pioneered some very exotic sale-leaseback-give back deal, involving the mueseum building and the museum's own board.
In other words, the board sold itself accelerated depreciation credits -- accelerated due to the fact the Peale Museum was on the National Historic Register -- and also the acceleration amortization credits derived from the two-year rennovation referred to in the above article. There may have been some investment credits thrown int the deal, too.
When Michael Hooker attempted a similar arrangement at Bennington College by trying to sell the whole campus to the college's board, the IRS finally closed the loophole.
John Sakowicz