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.

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 8

Jackson Gilman-Forlini (00:00): But also too, we know that there was also a residential presence off of Watchhouse Alley, which is the alley that runs behind the Peale. We know that there was relatively large African American community in the 19th century that lived back there. Not least of all, the Peale itself was the first public high school in Maryland open to black students. So any kind of evidence that we could find that dated to that period, I think would really help us fill in some of the stories that we're trying to tell about the building's history.

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 7

Jackson Gilman-Forlini: (00:02)We kind of have a sense of was going on back there in the 19th century. The Peale family actually using the backyard to manufacture gas for their gas lighting. That's one of the things the Peale is known for is the birthplace of gas lighting in America. One of the birthplaces I guess, birthplace of the Baltimore Gas and Electric Company was started out the Peale. The first public building in Baltimore that would be lit with gas lighting. So we know that there was a rudimentary gas manufacturing apparatus back there, that the Peale's were using to make the stuff from coal. So it would be really interesting if we could find some evidence of that operation.

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 6

Jackson Gilman-Forlini (00:01)So there wasn't much left in the building for when I started in 2012 there were some... Actually it's funny that the city was using it as a place to store memorabilia from a former mayor's administration, Mayor Kurt Schmoke. All of his awards and diplomatic gifts that he had received as mayor were being archived in the basement. Many of which has now been removed and actually sent to the Baltimore City Archives for proper storage.

Jackson Gilman-Forlini: I did learn that in terms of the buildings earliest period, there was in the 1970s, an excavation of a portion of the basement to create additional storage space down there. There was an archeological excavation done, or archeological survey done of that ground as part of that project.

Jackson Gilman-Forlini: Those artifacts still exist. They are now at the Maryland Archeological Conservation Lab in Calvert County, Maryland. They were conserved, and I was able to go through some of them a few months ago. There's some interesting stuff. There's a lot of pottery. Also, there's a sword, like ceremonial sabre that had been thrown in there. I guess they'd been using the basement as something of a garbage dump. So there's a cool size of material culture that came out of that, that's still available for research if anyone would want to go through it.

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 5

Jackson Gilman-Forlini: A fun discovery that I really enjoyed was actually when they were restoring the original window frames on the front of the building. The sashes are hung with a counterweight system. When they were removing the old counterweight hardware for restoration they discovered that the pockets in which the counterweights were set, those jams actually had been lined with recycled signs.

Jackson Gilman-Forlini: Basically, sheet metal signs that had been cut, and then fit as a liner for those counterweight pockets. We said, “Well, isn’t that interesting? Why are these metal signs here?” Well, it out that in the night early 1920s, late 19 teens, there was actually a sign fabrication shop that was renting space in the Peale. Basically, renting space from the city for their business.

Jackson Gilman-Forlini: Based on photographic evidence, we were able to determine that those particular windows where we found the sheet metal signs had been closed up in the 19th century, but then were reopened in the 1920s, and coincided exactly with the period when the sign shop was using that space. So we think that actually the signs that were used to line those pockets were recycled by the owners of the sign shop. Who were then basically, reusing the materials that they had on hand to restore the windows.

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 4

Jackson Gilman-Forlini (00:01): There's a few things that are original. So there're different levels of original, right? So there's original to the building's construction but then there were several renovations that happened throughout the 19th century. Each one of which has by itself acquired significance in its own right. So it is like a palimpsest. With each generation there’s new meaning that’s ascribed into the walls. The earliest period, a lot of the beams, and joists, and the floors, some of the exterior brick walls are original. When we opened up one of the ceilings on the first floor... But we did find the look to be evidence of the original floor joists for the second floor that it had at a later date, been sistered with another newer joist. So it looks like rather than taking up the old ones, at least by 1930, that there was some repair and stabilization of the existing.

Jackson Gilman-Forlini: But then there’s also like the windows for example, are probably not 1814 windows. But they do appear to date to perhaps the first renovation of the building which occurred in 1830 when it was converted to City Hall. Many of the windows did exhibit advanced age. Also, the method of assembling and glazing as well for those windows, is very similar to other 1830s and 1840s era windows that have been found in other Baltimore buildings.

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 3

Jackson Gilman-Forlini: (00:00) So most of what you see in the buildings current state dates to the 1929 to 1930 restoration. Which dates through the Colonial Revival period. There was I think in interest in time in exploring these different landmarks for the purpose of building a national identity based in the colonial period, but then also this was seen at the local level as well. Baltimore decided to do similar things to what was going on at Colonial Williamsburg.

Jackson Gilman-Forlini: We have the Star Spangled Banner Flag House which was restored, I think in the same year, actually as the Peale museum, as was Fort McHenry. So what the architects did at the time, because there was very, very little integrity left to the Peale building, they actually took building materials from other houses that dated to the early 19th century that were actually being torn down. They salvage those building materials and then recycled them and installed them in the Peale. So that includes a lot of flooring, a lot of woodwork, doors, door hardware, all that you see on the first floor actually date to the Peale's earliest period, but we're not from that location specifically.

Jackson Gilman-Forlini: Also, the front facade, all the brick work that you see on the front facade was recycled from a townhouse on the corner of Saratoga and St. Paul, that was being torn down in 1930. Evidently the color and composition and profile of that brick max very closely the brick on the Peale, which had vastly deteriorated, so they replaced that.

Jackson Gilman-Forlini: There was a brief period there where the city had a vacant building on his hands and they were trying to figure out what to do with it. So they decided to try to turn into a conference center, it never really worked out.

Photo: Historic American Buildings Survey E. H. Pickering, Photographer, September, 1936. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA

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 2

Jackson Gilman-Forlini (00:00) The most critical issue when we first began was a leaky roof. The roof that was there when I started was probably dated to the 1930 restoration of the building. So it was at the end of its useful lifespan. It was a turncoat tin roof, standing seam metal roof. There was a serious issue with water incursion into the building that was causing plaster damage in addition to other types of damage.

Jackson Gilman-Forlini: So the city committed to replacing that, and with a design by SM+P Architects, we replaced it with a historically accurate standing seam copper metal roof. We also made other envelope repairs as well at that time. Including some masonry repairs and the historic windows as well. Where the sashes were removed, and then they were restored and repaired, and then put back into the frames.

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 1

(00:01) My name is Jackson Gilman-Forlini. My title is historic preservation officer. I work for the Department of General Services, City of Baltimore. In that role, my agency is like the property manager for city owned buildings many of which are historic landmarks. Also, many of which have been used for museums for many years, used as museums. So my job is to make sure that the city, as the property owners are stewarding these buildings to historic preservation standards.

(00:30) One of our buildings is the Peale Museum. This is a national historic landmark, which was America's first purpose-built museum founded by Rembrandt Peale in 1814. He was the son of Charles Wilson Peale. The city actually acquired it in 1830 to serve as the first City Hall. It's had a long storied history, but most recently it was left vacant in 1997. The city has really struggled for a long time to find a good use for it.

(00:58) So when I started working for the city in 2012, I initiated a partnership with the Peale Center, nonprofit organization whose mission was to restore and reopen this building for the public as a kind of museum.

This digital story recording was created in conjunction with the Smithsonian's Museum on Main Street program and its Stories from Main Street student documentary initiative, called "Coming Home." The project encourages students and their mentors to research and record stories about small-towns and rural neighborhoods, waterways, personal memories, cultural traditions, work histories, as well as thoughts about American democracy. These documentaries are then shared on Smithsonian websites and social media.

In collaboration with Arthurdale Heritage in Arthurdale, West Virginia, fourth and fifth graders from West Preston School and a group of local homeschool students developed five videos that explore the history, tourism, nature, and agriculture of Arthurdale, WV. Students learned to conduct oral history interviews, draft scripts, along with taping and editing a video.

Speaker 1 (00:01): The history of Arthurdale, West Virginia.

Speaker 1 (00:03): Welcome to the history community of Arthurdale, located in Preston County, West Virginia. Arthurdale was founded during the Great Depression as the first homestead community in the country. Arthurdale was founded in 1934, by the First Lady Eleanore Roosevelt after she visited Scott's Run, a mining town that was hit hard by the Depression.

Speaker 2 (00:25): Helped from the federal government, the Quakers in West Virginia University, 165 families found new lives in Arthurdale. Each man had to pass a homesteader test to prove they could farm. They even had to trace their hands to show that they did not have any missing fingers.

Speaker 3 (00:47): Each family received a brand-new house with a refrigerator, washing machine, indoor plumbing and heating. They also had a root cellar, smokehouse, chicken coop, barn, and two to five acres that they had to farm.

Speaker 4 (00:59): Besides farming, homesteaders were expected to work other jobs to raise money. Women learn to weave and sold their woven goods in the stores as far as New York City. Men worked in factories, building vacuums, tractors, and radios. Some were skilled carpenters and blacksmiths who created beautiful pieces still used today.

Speaker 4 (01:26): Children went to school in the community. They followed a model called Progressive Education, which focused on hands on education. For example, boys and girls were to do woodworking and surveying, as well as weaving and basic home making skills.

Speaker 4 (01:49): The original schools still stand today and are owned by Arthurdale Heritage.

Speaker 5 (01:55): We spoke to Elizabeth Satterfield, the curator and director of Education at Arthurdale Heritage about how they preserve Arthurdale's history.

Elizabeth Satterfield (02:05): Arthurdale is important because it was the first new deal homestead community, and this means that out of 99 communities that were founded across the country during the New Deal, So that was between 1932 and 1940, that Arthurdale was the very first one. And it's still preserved today. 160 of the original 165 houses are still standing.

Elizabeth Satterfield (02:39): The most important part of my job is being able to preserve our history and tell stories, and that can look a lot of different ways. So that includes I get to work with collections all the time and make sure all of our artifacts are taken care of. I get to make sure our historic buildings are taken care of. I write lots of grants, which is how you apply for money from the government to try to work on your buildings and take care of your collection and do other important work. And then my favorite part is getting to do things in the community and coming out and doing work in the schools and with kids like you.

Asset ID: 2022.28.01

Find a complete transcript at www.museumonmainstreet.org