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History of The Peabody Institute
On July 4, 1815, in what was then known as Howard’s Woods, the cornerstone was laid for a monument honoring George Washington. Soon after the completion of this monument, the beautiful Mount Vernon district began to take shape. It was in this neighborhood that George Peabody founded his gift to Baltimore, The Peabody Institute.
By the 1830s, George Peabody had become a very successful businessman in our city as a senior partner and virtual director of one of the country’s largest mercantile firms with offices in Philadelphia and New York. Born in 1795 in Danvers, Massachusetts, Peabody had lived for a short time in Washington, D. C., fought in the War of 1812, and then moved to Baltimore where he set about the task of amassing one of the largest private fortunes and one the largest financial empires of his day. His story is part of the fabric of American history in that he helped collect the capital needed to push American railroads westward and directed the companies that laid the first transatlantic cables.
In addition to his contributions to many great technological and scientific ventures in the commercial arena, George Peabody became the first modern philanthropist, establishing the first philanthropic foundations in the United States and in England—all non-sectarian. This was a pattern that would be followed by many other members of his business and social circles. In Baltimore alone, his friends Johns Hopkins, Enoch Pratt, and William and Henry Walters founded the Johns Hopkins University, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and the Walters Art Museum.
After living in Baltimore for some twenty years, Peabody moved to London, then the center of world finance. While living there, he realized that London’s citizens had many cultural and educational opportunities available to them. He became almost obsessed with the idea of providing others with the educational opportunities that he had missed as a child in Massachusetts. His grandest venture in this area was the Peabody Institute, founded in 1857. Though postponed by the American Civil War, the opening of the Institute in1866 would mark the dawn of a new era in Baltimore’s cultural history. Baltimore now had its first public library, art gallery, academy of music, and lecture series.
A part of the Johns Hopkins University since 1976, the Peabody Institute is comprised of two divisions, the Conservatory of Music and the Preparatory.
The Conservatory of Music is a fully accredited college-level institution, offering bachelors, masters, and doctoral degrees in performance, composition, conducting, pedagogy, and music education. The bachelors degree program includes a large liberal arts component in keeping with George Peabody’s original philosophy of education, which includes a broad range of subjects and experiences. There are also programs which focus more fully on performing without the substantial academic requirements of the degree programs. The enrollment of the Conservatory runs to about 625 to 640 undergraduate and graduate students, who come from around the world, reflecting the Conservatory’s international reputation for excellence in performance and academics.
The Prep, as it is called, is a community school of the arts which has served as a model for a number of similar schools around the United States and in Europe as well. The students in the Prep can take private lessons in composition, voice, piano, and all the instruments commonly used in western art music. The Prep also offers a number of academic courses in music theory, music history, and a full program in dance. The total enrollment of the prep is approximately 2000 students. The Peabody Institute Elderhostel offers courses of study in music 46 weeks a year to seniors who come from throughout the United States and Canada.
The Conservatory building is the oldest of the Institute’s structures and was opened in 1866. It houses the Friedberg Concert Hall, our largest performing space, home to the Peabody Orchestra and the Peabody Opera Theatre. On the second floor is the beautifully renovated Griswold Hall, which houses the pipe organ. The Cohen Davison Theatre is located at street level between the Conservatoy building and the George Peabody Library.
The George Peabody Library, its neighbor to the east, opened in 1878 and is one of the most spectacular enclosed spaces in our city. The collection of more than 250,000 volumes, some of which are extremely rare, is valued in the millions of dollars. It is a non-circulating library which is open to those who need to use it for research purposes.
The next building to the east is Leakin Hall, the main campus of the Prep, which dates from the late 1920s. In addition to a number of administrative offices, classrooms, and studios, the building houses our fourth performance area, Goodwin Hall, an intimate space used principally for solo recitals.
The fourth building facing Mount Vernon Place is the New Building. Opened in 1990, it houses practice rooms, administrative offices, the Preparatory Dance Department, and the Arthur Friedheim Music Library. This library contains books, music scores, and recordings used by our faculty and students, as well as the Peabody Archives and the Galleria Piccola, a small but lovely gallery in which there is almost always an interesting exhibit which may or may not be directly connected to the history of the Peabody Institute.
The large buff brick building overlooking Centre Street to the south contains our two dormitories and the dining hall as well as the campus post office. Freshmen and sophomores are required to live on campus. There are also a few upperclassmen and graduate students who choose to live there for convenience. The building dates from 1969 and 1970 and was designed by Edward Durrell Stone, designer of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D. C.
The oldest and newest building on campus is the Peabody Inn, home to the Peabody Institute Elderhostel. Designed to be a unique hybrid between a college dormitory and a hotel, it was the first building in Elderhostel’s history dedicated solely to the purpose of housing an Elderhostel program. The award-winning renovation contains forty- eight guest rooms, two classrooms, and a beautiful conference room designed to fit within the original framework of four mid-19th Century town houses.
