American Academy of Music (Philadelphia, Pa.)

The American Academy of Music, incorporated on March 24, 1852, built in Philadelphia one of America’s grandest nineteenth-century opera houses. The structure, designed by the architects Napoleon Le Brun and Gustav Rung‚ and erected between 1855 and 1857, is located on the southwest corner of Broad and Locust streets in center city Philadelphia.

Not long after its incorporation, the Academy came under the influence of the Baker family of Philadelphia. Two successive generations of the Baker family presided over the Academy from the 1880s to the 1920s. Alfred G. Baker (1831–1892) was active at the Academy as early as 1881 and was elected president in 1884; he was followed by his son George Fales Baker, M.D. (1863–1929) who succeeded him as president in 1892.

Under their tenure, the Academy became widely known for presentations of opera and classical music. This aspect of the Academy’s performances forms a large part of John Marion’s 1984 history of the Academy Within these walls: a history of the Academy of Music in Philadelphia . Less well known, however, is that the Academy also offered many other kinds of attractions. It presented new technologies through phonograph concerts by the Girard Phonograph Company and early moving pictures by Lyman H. Howe. The Academy served as well as a hall for political and religious gatherings, educational lectures, and especially travel talks. Many of the great travel lecturers of the period were regulars at the Academy. Lecturers like Burton Holmes initially brought their hand-colored lantern slides to illustrate their “travelogues.” Later speakers like the popular Edward M. Newman incorporated motion picture segments with their travel talks.

Caldwell, Genoa ed. The Man who photographed the world: Burton Holmes travelogues 1886–1938. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1977. Kavanaugh, James V. Three American opera houses: the Boston Theater, the New York Academy of Music, the Philadelphia American Academy of Music. M. A. Thesis, University of Delaware, 1967. Marion, John F. Within these walls: a history of the Academy of Music in Philadelphia. Philadelphia: Restoration Office, The Academy of Music, 1984. Musser, Charles and Carol Nelson. High-class moving pictures: Lyman H. Howe and the forgotten era of the traveling exhibition, 1880–1920. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991.

From the guide to the American Academy of Music papers, 1852–circa 1940, 1896–1919, (University of Delaware Library - Special Collections)