Celebrating Culture: The Heart of the City
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Contributing to Society: Baltimore's Best Address

Celebrating Culture: The Heart of the City, also, Contributing to Society: Baltimore's Best Address. Mount Vernon Cultural Walk. , Celebrating Culture: The Heart of the City , Mount Vernon Place celebrates Baltimore’s rich cultural heritage, offering an extraordinary array of historic architecture, monuments, sculpture and cultural Institutions. The Washington Monument set the stage for this area in 1829, becoming the first public monument to Washington in the United States. Designed by Robert Mills (1781-1855), it memorializes Washington resigning his commission as commander of the Continental Army. Built in 1815 and 1829, the 178-foot monument has become an icon of Baltimore., The opening of the Peabody Institute in 1866 defined Mount Vernon as Baltimore’s cultural center. The Institute originally consisted of a music academy, a library, and art gallery, and a lecture hall, all open to the public. The music academy, the first music school of its kind in the US, has been internationally renowned since the late 19th century. Since 1977, the George Peabody Library and the Peabody Institute have operated as academic divisions of the Johns Hopkins University., The Walters Art Museum traces its roots to 1874 when William Walters (1819-1894) began opening his house to the public to share his art. By 1902, Walters' son, Henry (1848-1931), was acquiring art at an unprecedented scale, whole art collections were purchased., To exhibit his collection, Henry Walters built the Walters Art Gallery in 1905-09. The Walters Art Gallery expanded in 1974, and in 2000 it was renamed the Walters Art Museum., Mount Vernon attracted other cultural institutions. The Maryland Historical Society relocated in 1919 from Saratoga and St. Paul streets to the former Enoch Pratt house at the corner of Park Avenue and West Monument Street. In the 1970s CENTERSTAGE, a non-profit professional theater, moved into the former Loyola College and High School building. The Contemporary Museum, Baltimore’s premier contemporary art institution, renovated part of the old Home Mutual Life building at Centre and Park streets into exhibit space in 1999., Contributing to Society: Baltimore's Best Address , In the mansions surrounding the Mount Vernon squares, prominent Baltimoreans made major political, artistic and cultural contributions to the world. One such person was John Pendleton Kennedy (1795-1870), who lived on the site of the Peabody Institute in the 1830s and 1840s. He, along with James Fenimore Cooper and Washington Irving, helped to create and define American literature. He was also a U.S. Congressman, the Secretary of the Navy, a patron of Edgar Allen Poe, and a donor of land for the building of the Peabody Institute., Another was John Work Garrett (1820-1884), president of the B&O Railroad between 1858 and 1884, who lived at 101 West Monument Street during the mid-19th century. During the Civil War, he ensured that the B&O Railroad replenished supplies and troops for the Union. After the Civil War, Garrett secured agreements with German steamship companies that ushered immigrants through the port of Baltimore and onto B&O trains heading west., In the 20th century, Theodore Marburg (1862-1946) lived at 14 West Mount Vernon Place. As an architect of the International Peace Movement, he greatly contributed to the creation of the League of Nations, the forerunner of the United Nations. Other important residents include senator William Cabell Bruce (1860-1946), shipping magnate Albert Schumacher (1802-1871), lottery king Colonel Richard E. France, and doctor and banker John Hanson Thomas (1813-1881)., The four squares radiating from the monument became Baltimore's first planned open spaces. Created in 1831, the squares were simple, cleared lawns surrounded by a row of trees. In 1877, Frederick Law Olmstead, Sr., the father of landscape architecture and designer of Central Park in New York City, designed the north and south squares with Victorian sensibility. In 1902, the Olmsted Brothers Landscape Architects, the sons of Olmsted Sr., updated the design, and in 1916 architects Carrere and Hastings redesigned the squares into the current Beaux-arts Classicism plan.