Baltimore's Historic Charles Street
Peabody Institute, Library, and Conservatory of Music, MD

Endowed by George Peabody, “father of modern philanthropy,” in 1857 to bring culture to working residents, the Peabody Institute and Library includes a music academy, a public library, and an art gallery. Architect Edmund Lind designed the impressive structure in an Italianate Renaissance Revival style. You'll find the library interior one of the most striking in Baltimore. An atrium, surrounded by five tiers of ornamental cast-iron balconies and gold-scalloped columns, rises to a latticed skylight.