Mount Vernon Cultural Walk: George Peabody Library

Be Here Stories

The Mount Vernon Cultural Walk is created by The Baltimore National Heritage Area (BNHA), which promotes, preserves, and enhances Baltimore's historic and cultural legacy and natural resources for current and future generations. A walking tour of this and other destinations is available at www.explorebaltimore.org/tours. Located at 17 East Mount Vernon Place George Peabody’s bequest created a research library, art gallery, and lecture series in addition to a music conservatory. The library quickly outgrew its space, causing the Peabody Institute to open a new building next door in 1878. Architect Edmund G. Lind blended the two structures so that they appear to have been built at the same time rather than years apart. Known as Baltimore’s “Cathedral of Books,” the Peabody Library’s main reading room is considered by many to be the most spectacular interior space in Baltimore. Surrounding a central atrium, books are housed in five tiers of ornamental cast-iron balconies with gold-scalloped columns that soar to a latticed skylight 61 feet above the black-and-white marble floor. The unique ironwork was fabricated by Baltimore’s Bartlett-Robbins foundry. The library’s 300,000-volume collection includes books in all branches of knowledge, dating from the 15th century. The Peabody Institute also established Baltimore’s first art museum in the 1870s. Though it closed in the 1930s to make way for the growing conservatory, the Institute continues to maintain an art gallery. Following George Peabody’s instructions, the library and gallery remain free and open to the public.