When leaders of the Peabody Institute wanted to build on-campus student housing in the 1960s, they hired a prominent New York designer known for his work with cultural institutions, Edward Durell Stone.
Now the Peabody Institute, a division of the Johns Hopkins University since 1977, wants to build an academic hub in place of that student housing, and its leaders have once again turned to a prominent New York designer known for its work with cultural institutions, Ennead Architects.
Named after philanthropist George Peabody, the institute was founded in 1857 and opened to the public in 1866. It’s considered the oldest music and dance conservatory in the United States. Its historic core campus in Baltimore is bounded by St. Paul, Centre and Charles streets and Mount Vernon Place.
Ennead (pronounced any-add) is one of three architecture firms that designed the 10-level Hopkins Bloomberg Center on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D. C. – a transformation of the former Newseum journalism museum that Ennead also designed. It worked on that project with Rockwell Group and SmithGroup, with Oehme, van Sweden and Associates as the landscape architect.
The firm was founded in 1963 by architect James Polshek, who left in 2005 when it was known as Polshek Partnership. The firm’s partners renamed their practice in 2010. Now a distinct studio within CannonDesign, it has 160 employees and offices in Los Angeles and Shanghai as well as New York.
In Egyptian mythology, Ennead or Great Ennead was a group of nine deities. The term is a reference to the nine partners who rebranded the practice in 2010. They chose the name to signify a shift away from a hierarchy centered on Polshek and towards a collaborative model and shared leadership structure – part of a larger trend among design firms to move away from ‘starchitect” branding.
In addition to the Bloomberg Center, Ennead’s projects include the William Jefferson Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock, Arkansas; The Rose Center for Earth and Space at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; the Shanghai Planetarium in Shanghai, China, the Standard Hotel on New York’s High Line; the U. S. Embassy in Ankara, Turkey and another ‘Peabody’ project, the Peabody Essex Museum and Renovation in Salem, Mass.
Ennead’s higher education clients include the University of Michigan; Stanford University; the University of Texas at Austin; Kansas State University; the Massachusetts College of Art and Design; Syracuse University and the University of Oregon.
This will be Ennead’s second major project in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon historic district. The Walters Art Museum hired the firm in the early 2000s to prepare a strategic master plan to guide development on its campus. Ennead is also working for Hopkins on its East Baltimore medical campus, on projects related to the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
A new academic hub
Stone designed the Peabody Institute Residence Halls at 20 W. Centre St. long before Peabody became affiliated with Hopkins. His plan called for two residential towers to rise above a garage at the northwest corner of St. Paul and Centre streets. The towers house 165 students, with a dining hall and other common areas located on a plaza level on the garage’s roof.
In 2024, Peabody acquired the former Waterloo Place apartments at 649 St. Paul St., one block east of its historic campus, and as of this fall has converted that 198-unit development into a “residential commons” just for its students — a move that freed up the land occupied by Stone’s building for a new non-residential project.
According to the Hub, Hopkins’ in-house news source, the new academic hub is being designed to bring together “state-of-the-art classrooms that serve Peabody’s growing programs in music and technology, a flexible performance space and expanded practice facilities conducive to the highest level of music and dance for which Peabody is known.”
Proposed programming for the building, the Hub said, includes “spaces dedicated to enriched learning, research, practice, rehearsal, student services and dining facilities. The project will also house the Center for Performing Arts and Health, improving student access to health and wellness services, while embedding pioneering performing arts research practices in medicine, nursing and public health on the Peabody campus.
“Following a rigorous selection process, the architectural design firm Ennead will lead this exciting project for Peabody,” the institute’s website states. “Ennead has substantial experience In performing arts and education-related spaces…Ennead is leading a comprehensive research and planning process – including gathering input from focus groups representing the Peabody community – to develop the program for these new spaces.”
Planning commission hearing
Now that Peabody is a Hopkins division, the university’s office of Facilities & Real Estate is leading the planning effort. Ennead Principal Felicia Berger is heading the design team, overseen by partner Richard Olcott. Whiting Turner is the general contractor.
Renderings of the proposed replacement building have not been released. Peabody representatives have told members of the Mount Vernon Belvedere Association that it will be no taller than the existing east and west residential towers – about five or six stories.
On Oct. 19, Baltimore City Council member Zac Blanchard introduced legislation to rezone Peabody’s properties at 1 E. Mount Vernon Place and in the 600 block of St. Paul Street to make the expansion possible.
Baltimore’s Planning Commission is scheduled to consider that bill during its meeting on Thursday, Oct. 29. Attorney Caroline Hecker, Managing Partner of Rosenberg Martin Greenberg LLP and a specialist in Land Use & Zoning and Real Estate law, is representing Hopkins and Peabody. The meeting will be held on the eighth floor of the Charles L. Benton Jr. Building at 417 E. Fayette St. The Peabody item is scheduled for 2:30 p.m.
