The Peabody Bookshop and Beer Stube was a fixture in the
Mount Vernon section of
Baltimore, Maryland for over 50 years.
There was a crowded, dusty bookshop in front, and a crowded room in the back where customers could get beer and a sandwich. There was a piano on one wall, mounted animal heads, wooden tables carved with the names of patrons. At 10:00 PM, Dantini the Magnificent would do his 15-minute magic show.[1]
The bookshop also served as an art gallery for local artists.[2]
Brothers Hugo and Siegfried Weisberger, Austrian immigrants, started the bookshop in 1922, during
Prohibition. Siegfried became sole owner in 1931, when Hugo died.[3]
This was an early example of a bookshop with its own beer bar, and possibly the very first such in the US.[4]
Weisberger abandoned the Peabody in 1954, convinced by long time patron
H. L. Mencken, that the "Age of the Boob" had arrived, and people were no longer interested in "books and ideals and culture. They only want dollars."[5]
When Siegfried walked away from "100,000 volumes nobody wants to read", the news was covered across the nation, from Detroit to Phoenix, Arizona; Wilmington, Delaware to Santa Cruz, California.
[6][7][8][9][10][11]
Interregnum
The Peabody didn't stay closed. It reopened under the ownership of Paul P. Adler and Irving
Mindess, later in 1954, and remained popular with students from the
University of Maryland[12]
Rose Hayes years
The oft-married Rose Boyajian Smith Pettus Hayes took ownership of the shop in 1957 and ran it until she died in 1986.[1]
Rose added a second bar upstairs,[13] and was active in preserving other Baltimore properties,[14][15] including revitalizing the Brexton Hotel[16]
In the 70's the Peabody hosted Saturday film festivals.[17]
In 1979, the Peabody suffered the loss of two long-time performers: singer–violinist Max Rathje who knew every regular's favorite song, and Vincent Cierkes, popularly known as “Dantini the Magnificent."[18]
The shop closed not long after Rose's death.
End
The building at 913 North Charles Street was demolished in 1997, to make way for a parking lot.[19]
^Haymann, Ed (September 1954).
"Baltimore's Famous Beer Stuber". The Old Line. Vol. XXI, no. 1. University of Maryland. pp.
14–15 – via Internet Archive.
^"Robot Mystery Page". Natalie Standiford. 2018-08-02. Archived from
the original on 2018-08-30. Retrieved 2019-09-29. Peabody Book Shop and Beer Stube, the real-life inspiration for Carmichael's Book Shop (the Peabody is now, sadly, closed)