Category: History

Thanks to the continual help and support of Baltimore Gas and Electric, the restoration of a nineteenth-century gas pole and fire alarm box is complete! The pole was lifted out of the back garden of the Peale Center for Baltimore History and Architecture by volunteer BGE engineers and was taken to be restored by David Conrad of Baltimore Foundry Works on an early Saturday morning in March. The pole was initially installed on the South East corner of Monument Street, and Park Ave (see photograph provided by Kevin Larmore) in 1906. When the City’s call box system was shut down in the middle of the twentieth century, it was installed in the historic Peale Museum’s garden. Now you may be asking, what exactly is a fire alarm box, and why is it significant?

Baltimore first installed its call box system in 1859-1860 and was the first line of defense when it came to fires within the City. Each call box had wiring running to the central office, which was located on the second floor of the Peale Museum building, by then being used as City Hall, from 1859 up until 1896. When the fire alarm box was pulled, the central office would get the signal and would relay it to the appropriate fire station. When the firemen arrived at the scene, they would signal back to the central office by pulling the alarm box several more times, utilizing Morse code to communicate if they needed more men or equipment. In this way, the Peale served as the nerve center for the city’s fire alarm system.

The Peale Museum’s founder, Rembrandt Peale, had introduced another new technology, gas lighting, to his galleries two generations before. In order to attract visitors at night and sell more tickets to his Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts, in 1816 Peale began illuminating his galleries with gas light chandeliers on specially-advertised evenings. By 1817, Rembrandt Peale and his partners had founded the Gas Light Company of Baltimore, which is today Baltimore Gas and Electric, and secured the contract to supply gas streetlights throughout the City of Baltimore. Through his efforts, Baltimore was the first city in the United States, and one of the first in the world, to be illuminated by gas lighting. Gas lights lined the streets of Baltimore up until the late 1950s when they almost entirely removed. Through the restoration of this pole and fire box, it will serve as an excellent artifact to showcase this aspect of Baltimore’s innovative history.

See the renovation process below!

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The Peale Center’s new roof is almost finished. This is the first step in restoring America’s oldest museum building, a National Historic Landmark. Plans call for the building to reopen in 2020 as a center for Baltimore history and architecture.

The work is being done by Ruff Roofers, a firm that has put new roofs on other iconic structures in the city, including the base of the Washington Monument, the Old Otterbein Church, Stanford White’s Lovely Lane Church (Spanish tile), and the copper dome that crowns the cupola of Gilman Hall, centerpiece of the Johns Hopkins University’s Homewood campus.

The Peale Center’s new roof is a standing seam metal roof, “basically a copper roof with a tin-zinc coating,” according to Tim Caldwell, general manager of Ruff Roofers, who is supervising the work. The old roof on the building, installed in the early 20^th century, was also a standing seam metal roof made of galvanized steel coated with lead. The material was known as terne, and required painting, he said. The old roof had been repaired in 1970, when major renovations were made to the building, but leaks had developed since then, causing damage to the interior walls and decorative plasterwork.

When they tore off the old metal roof, Caldwell said, they found underneath wooden skip sheathing. This was made up of random width boards, some with a bark texture, that were mostly 18-22 inches wide, indicating that had been cut from the center of the tree. This material was left in place, covered with half-inch plywood, and the new metal roof installed over it. Caldwell said the new roof will have a 50-100-year lifespan.

An important element of the project was re-constructing the lantern and skylight that top the rear hip roof of the building. (The main portion of the building facing the street has a pitched roof.) The lantern structure was removed with a crane, taken to the shop, refaced with the same material as the roof, re-glazed, and then put back on the building, again with a crane. The skylight lights the second-floor space that was once Rembrandt Peale’s art gallery and will become a presentation and exhibit hall in the new center.

For a building, the roof is the main line of defense against the elements, according to Caldwell. “It’s amazing how quickly water can do damage; it will rot wood, freeze and expand in masonry,” he said. “The roof is one of the first things you need to do to protect a building.”

Rebuilding and capping the chimneys, re-pointing the exterior brick and restoring the masonry, including the sandstone sills, is also ongoing as part of the same contract. Academy Stone is the contractor for the masonry restoration; this work is expected to be finished in about six weeks. The total cost of the first phase of the Peale restoration is about $700,000, including roughly $500,000 for the new roof. It is being paid for by the City of Baltimore, which owns the building. SM&P Architects is the designer and the Baltimore Department of General Services is overseeing the project.

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