The Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University is a private conservatory and preparatory school in Baltimore, Maryland. It was founded in 1857 and opened in 1866 by merchant/financier and philanthropist George Peabody (1795–1869), and is the oldest conservatory in the United States. Its association with JHU in recent decades, begun in 1977, allows students to do research across disciplines. History George Peabody (1792–1869) founded the institute with a bequest of about $800,000 from his fortune made initially in Massachusetts and later augmented in Baltimore (where he lived and worked from 1815 to 1835) and vastly increased in banking and finance during following residences in New York City and London, where he became the wealthiest American of his time. Completion of the white marble Grecian-Italianate west wing/original building housing the institute, designed by Edmund George Lind, was delayed by the Civil War. It was dedicated in 1866, with Peabody himself, traveling across the North Atlantic Ocean, speaking at the ceremonies on the front steps in front of landmark Washington Monument circle before a large audience of notaries and citizens including hundreds of assembled pupils from the Baltimore City Public Schools. Under the direction of well-known musicians, composers, conductors, and Peabody alumni, the conservatory, concerts, lecture series, library and art gallery, led by men of literary and intellectual lights along with an annual awarding of gold, silver and bronze medals with certificates and cash prizes to top graduates of the city, known as the "Peabody Prizes", attracted a considerable national attention to the Institute and the city's growing culture. Under strong academic leadership, the Peabody evolved into an internationally renowned cultural and literary center through the late 19th and the 20th centuries, especially after a major expansion in 1877–1878, with the completion of its eastern half housing the George Peabody Library with iconic five stacked tiers of wrought iron balconies holding book stacks/shelves, surmounted by a beveled glass skylight, one of the most beautiful and distinctive libraries in the U.S. The institute building's 1878 east wing on East Mount Vernon Place containing the affiliated George Peabody Library, joined the other rows of architecturally significant structures of townhouses, mansions, art gallery, clubs, hotels, churches around the Nation's first memorial to its first President which developed into the Mount Vernon-Belvedere neighborhood, carved from the rolling hills north of Baltimore Town on the estate and nearby mansion of "Belviedere", home of Revolutionary War commander