American Conservatory of Music (Hammond, Indiana & Belize)

The American Conservatory of Music, Inc., of Hammond, Indiana, is a binational music school that operates under the auspices of the Orthodox Church of Belize, which is part of the Greek Orthodox Metropolitanate of Central America, one of the 18 Archdioceses and Metropolitinates under the Patriarchate of Constantinople. The Conservatory was founded in 1992 with the intent to save, by becoming successor, a 105-year-old Chicago institution by the same name, American Conservatory of Music, which was shuttered in 1991 as a result of full liquidation under a Chapter 7 bankruptcy. The new institution was first located in Chicago—it took over the lease of the bankrupt Conservatory at 17 N. State Street, Stevens Building, but in 1998, moved to 4117 Wabash Avenue, Hammond, Indiana, 24 miles away. The building in Hammond was, from 1904 to 1940, the factory of the Straube Piano Company. Today, the institution is located at 252 Wildwood Road in Hammond and at 16 Maxi Street, Santa Elena, Belize.

The founding group—composed of alumni, friends, students, and former faculty—organized informally in 1991 to wage an effort to resume operations of the bankrupt institution. The effort was headed by Richard Allen Schulze (b. Oct 20, 1928; d. Aug 7, 2001, Hammond, Indiana) and wife, Theodora Schulze (née Economou; b. Sept 19, 1930).

The group formed an entity named "Friends of the Conservatory, Inc.", in Illinois and began to operate a school in the Chicago building that the American Conservatory had vacated. The new entity had some of the same faculty and continuing students. They represented the new entity as an uninterrupted continuation of the American Conservatory of Music.