Today was “Crane Day” at the Peale as the old cooling tower was removed at the crack of dawn this morning. A new eco-friendly HVAC system is being installed as part of the Peale’s renovations, funded in part by a grant from the Maryland Energy Administration.

The new HVAC system will be not only more reliable and energy-efficient, it will also be discretely installed in the Peale’s attic so that the Peale’s award-winning roof, which was replaced in 2017 by Baltimore City’s Department of General Services, can be enjoyed in its full glory by passing birds, helicopters, drones, and dirigibles.

Big thanks to our neighbors at Zion Church for letting the crane team into their parking lot behind the Peale at such an early hour! Staff are relieved there will be no more trips onto the roof to kick the cooling system back into operation during a hot summer’s performance. We are grateful to all the donors to our capital campaign who made this day possible!

Architect Robert Carey Long, Sr. designed stove niches into Rembrandt Peale’s museum. They were plastered over later in the 20th century, but were still visible after the Peale’s 1930 renovations. In 2019, street artist Adam Stab did a live painting event as part of his solo exhibition at the Peale, creating a mural over one niche in the third floor “Assembly Room” while Ronald Rucker played his “Electronic Art.”

It was hard to say good-bye to Stab’s site specific work at the Peale, but as part of the current renovations, Peale’s original niches have been uncovered once more.

John Scarff, architect of the 1930 renovations, which saved the Peale from demolition, wrote of the niches:

The six stove niches throughout the museum are original and Rembrandt Peale’s account book at the Maryland Historical Society shows that he bought more than one stove for the building. The entirely new radiator enclosures in these niches were suggested by the original stoves in the entrance hall of the Octagon House in Washington, D.C., built in 1800 for John Tayloe.

– Historic American Building Survey (HABS 398-MD) Report by Laurie Ossman, Ph.D., 2001. 

“Today really is the pits.” That was the clever subject line of an email chain last week between Peale board member William “Chick” Chickering and Jackson Gilman-Forlini, City of Baltimore Historic Preservation Officer, about the digging of the Peale’s elevator pit. Renovation work continued last week as the team exposed original brickwork and early 19th c. joists. Areas for the cafe and elevator shaft have also been laid out in the building.

According to Gliman-Forlini, the interior walls, particularly around the foundation, “are all original to the best of anyone’s knowledge. There’s no record of these having been replaced at any time.” Also original to Rembrandt Peale’s building are the stove niches on the second and third floors, which have now been uncovered.

On the other hand, “the façade was replaced in 1930 with salvaged brick from an 1830s townhouse on the corner of Saratoga and St. Paul that was selected because it closely matched the color, size, and texture of the original façade brick. The exterior wall along Watchhouse Alley was also replaced in 1905,” most likely with new brick at that time. Other features, like the brick wall that bisects the “East Wing” first floor was added in 1930. The flag stone pavers in the current garden date to that era as well. Gilman-Forlini notes that they “originally served as the pre-1930 toilet partitions!”

Over the last few weeks, the Peale’s renovation team has made some intriguing discoveries as they removed a 20th-century ceiling. The image above shows straight cut marks on the room’s wooden joists, indicating that this joist was cut by a “sash-style” sawmill, and therefore, is as least as old as the 1830 conversion of the building into City Hall.

It’s possible that the joists could date to the original 1814 building; however, the team is cautious not to assign the joists to Rembrandt Peale’s original construction because records indicate that a large quantity of joists and framing lumber were purchased by the City as part of the 1830 adaptations undertaken when the Museum was converted into Baltimore’s first City Hall. “There’s a very good chance that much more of the original framing lumber survives than we previously thought. At the latest, these joists date to 1830,” said Jackson Gilman-Forlini, Historic Preservation Officer with the City of Baltimore.

Learn more about renovation work at the Peale from 1830 to the present in this interview with Gilman-Forlini, and stay tuned for more news and photos in this News section, on our Flickr page, and in our weekly emails!

With your support, such discoveries will continue to be made in the weeks and months ahead. We’ve raised $4.8 million to date to return this historic gem to public use, so are nearing the end of the Peale’s $5.2 million capital campaign! Any amount you can contribute will help continue our interior renovations to make the Peale a fully accessible home for Baltimore’s stories.

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