Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts

It was originally the second location of Rubens Peale's Baltimore Museum which occupied the second floor of the building beginning in January 1830.

In 1834, it was renamed the Baltimore Museum and Gallery of Fine Arts after the enterprise was taken over by Edmund Peale, the nephew of Rubens.

The building was built and owned by John Clark who used the lower floor of the structure to sell state lottery tickets.

Like other dime museums, it also featured a "lecture room" that presented a wide range of changing entertainment, from plays to music groups and different types of variety theatre such as ventriloquists and magicians.

[5] In 1845, Edmund Peale sold the BMGFA to P. T. Barnum,[6] and the building underwent a major reconstruction to turn it into a proper professional theatre venue in 1847.

Other actors who were active at the BMGFA in the 1840s and 1850s included Junius Brutus Booth, Charlotte Cushman, Edward Loomis Davenport, Edwin Forrest, Joseph Jefferson, Charles Kean, Ellen Kean, Kate Ludlow, Charles Macready, James Murdock, Fanny Wallack, and James William Wallack.

[10] After this, the venue became more of a bar and space for public dances than a theatre, although it never completely stopped offering live entertainment of one form or another.