YouthWorks at Johns Hopkins University

Inside and outside of school, I am heavily involved in the arts, especially dance. Because of my love for various art forms, I was excited to tour the Peabody Institute with my YouthWorks group. Peabody is a well known conservatory and preparatory school located in the Mount Vernon neighborhood of Baltimore. When we arrived there for our tour recently, we were met by our tour guide, Richard Selden, director of marketing and communications at Peabody, and Paul Espinosa, library assistant at Peabody. We first walked into a room with high ceilings, a large painting of George Peabody and rare books in display cases. From there, we entered the actual library – home of the Cathedral of Books, which has more than 300,000 volumes and six ornate floors. I was shocked at the number of floors and volumes of books in the library. I love to read and I had never been around so many books before. Unfortunately, the library assistant told us that none of the books could be checked out and that no one besides him could even take books off the shelves. This is to prevent the mishandling of the old books and further preserve their worn covers and pages. The architecture of Peabody’s library is spectacular. The railings and balconies in the Cathedral are constructed of cast iron to prevent catastrophic damage in the event of a fire. Besides the Cathedral, we also saw Friedberg Hall, three different concert halls, dance studios, and music practice rooms where kids who are there for the summer, were participating in various programs. For me, the best part of our trip to Peabody was watching the young dancers in their beginner’s class and observing the art history of Peabody. Overall, this visit was great for me because I plan to audition and registrar for Peabody’s Dance program in the fall.