Peabody Institute

The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University is a private music and dance conservatory and preparatory school in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1857, it became affiliated with Johns Hopkins in 1977.

History

Philanthropist and merchant George Peabody (1795–1869) founded the institute in 1857 and opened it in 1866 with a bequest of about $800,000. This sum, from his personal fortune, was amassed initially in Massachusetts and later augmented in Baltimore (where he lived and worked from 1815 to 1835). It vastly increased through banking and finance during following residences in New York City and London, where he became the wealthiest American of his time.

Completion of the white marble Grecian-Italianate west wing, the original building housing the institute, designed by Edmund George Lind, was delayed by the Civil War. It was dedicated in 1866, with Peabody, having traveled across the North Atlantic Ocean, speaking at the ceremonies on the front steps in front of the Washington Monument circle before a large audience of notaries and citizens including hundreds of assembled pupils from the Baltimore City Public Schools. Under the direction of well-known musicians, composers, conductors, and Peabody alumni, the conservatory, concerts, lecture series, library and art gallery, along with the "Peabody Prizes" (an annual awarding of gold, silver and bronze medals with certificates and cash to top graduates of the city), attracted a considerable national attention to the Institute and the city's growing culture. Under strong academic leadership, the Peabody evolved into an internationally renowned cultural and literary center through the late 19th and the 20th centuries, especially after a major expansion in 1877–1878, with the completion of its eastern half housing the George Peabody Library with five stacked tiers of wrought iron balconies holding book stacks(shelves), surmounted by a beveled glass skylight, one of the most beautiful and distinctive libraries in the U.S.

The 1878 east wing on East Mount Vernon Place, containing the affiliated George Peabody Library, joined the other rows of townhouses, mansions, art gallery, clubs, hotels, and churches around the Washington Monument which developed into the Mount Vernon neighborhood on the former estate of Revolutionary War commander John Eager Howard. The institute grew from a local academy, with an art and sculpture gallery, public lecture series, and the extensive reference library which, although non-circulating, predated the first public library system in America.