Peabody Institute

The Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University (JHU) is a conservatory and university-preparatory school in the Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood of northern Baltimore, Maryland, United States, facing the Washington Monument circle at the corner of North Charles and East Monument Streets (also known as intersection of Mount Vernon Place and Washington Place).

The Peabody Institute was founded in 1857 by philanthropist George Peabody (1795–1869), and is the oldest conservatory in the United States. Its association with JHU allows students to do research across disciplines.

George Peabody founded the Institute with a bequest of about $800,000 from his fortune made in Massachusetts and Baltimore (where he lived from 1815 to 1835).

Completion of the Grecian-Italian west wing building housing the Institute, designed by Edmund George Lind, was delayed by the Civil War; it was dedicated in 1866. Under the direction of well-known musicians, composers, conductors, and Peabody alumni, the Institute grew from a local academy into an internationally renowned cultural center through the late 19th and the 20th centuries.

The Institute building's 1878 east wing contains the affiliated George Peabody Library, which functioned from 1966 to 1982 for a time as a division of the Enoch Pratt Free Library, the city's public library. The library was created and endowed by Peabody's friend and fellow Bay-Stater, Enoch Pratt (1808–1896). (In turn, Peabody and Pratt inspired steel industrialist and millionaire Andrew Carnegie (1835–1919), who endowed more than 2,500 libraries.)