The Peabody Book Shop: One for the books… Or Not.

The Peabody Book Shop was ‘a place where respectable people could come for a sandwich and a glass of beer.’

By Mary K. Zajac (Style Magazine, Sept/Oct 2009)

Come in,” the sign above the basement door at 913 N. Charles St. invited. “Visit our Famous Beer Stube serving Cocktails – Beer – Food.”

There’s no counting how many Baltimoreans descended the dingy stairwell into the Peabody Book Shop and Beer Stube to share a beer at the communal wooden tables, hear poetry read aloud, participate in sing-alongs or watch as the Great Dantini performed his magic tricks. But everyone who passed through, it seems, has a story to tell, and one rarely about books.

My father still talks about one evening when he saw film star Veronica Lake and another when crooner Rudy Vallee walked in (he was in town performing at one of Baltimore’s theaters). Cockeysville resident Morry Wexler (father of Style senior editor Laura Wexler) recalls glimpsing his future wife, Trudy Ricker, there for the first time (though they didn’t actually meet until later). This was in the 1960s, when the Peabody was in the hands of the formidable Rose Boyajjian Smith Pettus Hayes (the lady loved— or perhaps didn’t love— her husbands), who owned and ran the two-story brick storefront at 913 N. Charles from 1957 until she died in 1986.

“Rose Smith [as she was once known] was a tough lady,” Wexler remembers. “She could deal with people. If she wanted to she could have picked them up by the seat of the pants and thrown them out.”

A 1968 Baltimore magazine article describes Rose as “an amiable but hard-headed woman with Streisand-like features” who tried hard to maintain the Peabody’s original aura of conviviality, if not the book inventory. Wexler remembers bachelor nights with friends at the Peabody when the proprietress would usher pretty female patrons to the long community tables where he and his friends were drinking. It was that kind of chummy place.

Founded by Austrian immigrant Siegfried Weisberger and his brother Hugo, the Peabody started life as a bookshop around 1927. When Hugo Weisberger died in 1931, Siegfried, who with his circular framed glasses, bow ties and inky mustache bore a slight resemblance to Groucho Marx, maintained the business, keeping the bookshop stocked with the kind of inventory he thought was important: an esoteric collection of art books, literature (in French, German and English), music and medical texts. In 1933, he transformed the building’s garage into a beer cellar as “a place where respectable people could come for a sandwich and a glass of beer,” he recalled in a 1974 article in The Alternative magazine. “Beer and books go together like balls and bats,” he opined in another publication.

Over the years, Weisberger’s “respectable” clientele included medical students, Peabody students, out of town visitors, and most famously, H.L. Mencken, with whom Weisberger was known to share conversations and glasses of beer (it was also rumored that F. Scott Fitzgerald drank there once— but then he drank at a lot of places). There was food, including sausages made by Weisberger himself, and there was nearly always music, especially singing, led from the upright piano that sat snug against one of the paneled walls.

Continue reading “One for the books” at Style Magazine.

This entry was posted in Baltimore Babylon, Baltimorons, Beer, Dining, H.L. Mencken, Nightspots, Vices and tagged , , , , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

22 Responses to The Peabody Book Shop: One for the books… Or Not.

  1. This is one of those amazing Baltimore places that I never got to. I knew of it. I was dying to get there and then it was gone. I done messed up.

    • I DID get there…and I have a mug to prove it. We lived in Baltimore County [Owings Mills] at the time and had gone to “town” to see “The Green Apple Nasties” at a Baltimore celebration and City Fair [I think it was called]. A any rate after several groups had performed…refreshments were needed…so we ducked into the Beer Stube…and I talked the waiter into selling me a mug. We moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington in the early 1970s…and in 1980 our house burned to the ground…but we managed to find in the rubble, some treasures. One was my Peabody’s Mug and a few others of my collection of mugs. It brings back so many happy memories of living in Baltimore! Ruth “Nikki” Nickell; Hoquiam, Washington

  2. Scott – I never made it to the Beer Stube either. I was a county boy!

  3. Joel Cairo says:

    I was from NJ, working for a pipeline company and got transferred to the Baltimore area in 1959. By chance I found the Peabody Book Shop while in town one night. I thought I was in Europe. I told my friends back in Jersey about it and they came down to see. They all loved it. I got to know Rose too. Even though we’re all in our late 70’s now, we still reminiss about the place. It was one in a million.

  4. It was a truly magical place where the memories made would be endelibly etched in hearts and minds, melding with the ethreal and eccentric atmosphere made by each one who entered into the cultural shifting of society of that era…

  5. Another far out favorite was THE ZEN DEN !

  6. Ruth A. “Nikki” Nickell says:
    February 2, 2016 at 3:35 am
    I DID get there…and I have a mug to prove it. We lived in Baltimore County [Owings Mills] at the time and had gone to “town” to see “The Green Apple Nasties” at a Baltimore celebration and City Fair [I think it was called]. A any rate after several groups had performed…refreshments were needed…so we ducked into the Beer Stube…and I talked the waiter into selling me a mug. We moved to Bainbridge Island, Washington in the early 1970s…and in 1980 our house burned to the ground…but we managed to find in the rubble, some treasures. One was my Peabody’s Mug and a few others of my collection of mugs. It brings back so many happy memories of living in Baltimore! Ruth “Nikki” Nickell; Hoquiam, Washington

  7. Ripper says:

    The owners son would toil over a caricature as you stood still only to find out in the end a atick figure was all he could draw

  8. Kelsey H says:

    Peabody’s was the beer drinking literary hangout of my college days in the 70s. Was that a moose up on the wall, and a french horn? Thousands of books you could thumb through, tables varnished by time, smoke and grease. Music and friends. Oh, and beer, lots of beer.

  9. Scott W. Williams says:

    I went there as a timid Morgan College student in 1961. It was the first place I ever read my poetry to others (1963), and the place I learned to appreciate Folk Music. Each time I traveled home from Buffalo New York, I always found time to spend at least one evening there until my father died in the 1980s.

  10. Albert says:

    Loved the Peabody!

  11. Kenneth Wright says:

    Had magical times there in late 60s.

  12. Penny Thomas says:

    In the early 1970’s I worked downtown at Maryland National Bank (now defunct). I went to the Peabody Book Store every chance I could go. I went first, curiously, for books, hard-to-find, old, out-of-print, and then, discovered the artists! Violinists, celloists, authors, poets, the whole world was encapsulated in this tiny showroom. I am glad I was able to enjoy the great Peabody Book Store. Salute!

  13. Mark Kotishion says:

    I worked for Rose as a piano player while attending Mount St. Joseph’s High School. I played for Dantini’s act. There was also a wonderful man playing violin named Max Rathje (sic) who was very kind to me. I hated high school and preferred to hang with the adults and other musicians like Jonathan Salkov, Rose said I was a minor and she could not pay me. I took my payment in Gin & tonics and Chesterfields. Best childhood ever. I miss you Rose, Johnny, Max and all. It was a perfect Baltimore teenagehood, getting thrown out of Abe Sherman’s bookstore, then playing at the PBS. I have played from Pittsburgh to South Korea but my heart is still in that now parking lot on Charles Street.

  14. Leonard Bragg says:

    In 1977 I lived in Baltimore while my Navy ship was in drydock at Bethlehem Steel. I rented an apartment from the owner on the corner of Park and Tyson. We loved this place and frequented there often. Loved my time in Baltimore. Haven’t been there since. Hopefully I will return to see all of the wonderful changes to your city.

  15. BOB G SEILER says:

    wonderful place ,took all my first dates their.they all loved this place .you could drink have a magic show listen to music and caracture drawings done(this was very entertaining)

  16. Michael Emig says:

    I remember going to Peabody Beerstube in the 1970’s. The front of the bookstore had piles of ancient, dusty books, that I don’t think, anybody would actually read.

    I had to go through a doorway, in the rear of the book shop, to get to the beerstube, located in the back of the building. The actual beerstube, had an iron chandelier and a kind of a vaulted ceiling and a fireplace. There were various stuffed animal heads, hanging on the walls.
    The tables were small and each had a lighted candle, for ambiance. They had a piano player, who played music on an old, upright piano. There was a magician, named: Dantini, who would perform an act, linking and unlinking metal rings, which were about one foot in diameter.
    While drinking beer, I was absolutely amazed by his dexterity. Several years later, I saw the Great Dantini, laying in the dirt, on Broadway and Thames Street, sleeping-off a drunken evening.
    I really liked going to Peabody Book Store, during my mid-twenties. I had brought a new girl-friend of mine to Peabody Book Store, for a first date, but she was banned by Rose Pettus; herself, the first time that I brought her there! I used to be attracted to unusual women, when I was young. I later found out that they stayed that way 24/7.

    Now, I am now,73 years old, happily married for 40 years and reflecting on my past life. I have to say that sometimes, I miss some parts of my youth. But, I now realize that things and places, that I used to like, have been either torn down, or burned to the ground. Perhaps, my youthful memories were not as wonderful as I remembered?

  17. Is this the Bookstore that a British by name of Josephine Adler owned in 1958?

  18. dale german says:

    I had a trio in the early to mid 60’s that played folk music, and The Peabody was one of the places we had a steady gig for a while. I saw Dantini perform many times, and there was also a guy who played the zither. Does anyone recall his name? It was always a fun time there, and Rose was great.

  19. Hello,

    Just wanted to join the conversation. My dad (Charles Lancaster Jr.) ran the bookshop and bar from 1965-1985 when Rose died. My parents lived across the street in small carriage house @ 905 Morton Street. I was their first of five children and my childhood memories of going to the bookshop remain with me to this day. Did anyone here ever meet my father? He went by the name “Charlie Lancaster”…he had a beard and was in the Coast Guard. My father was born in 1931 and passed away in Spring of 2016. Really miss Baltimore of years ago. So much has changed about the city. I’m collecting Peabody related stories to publish into a coffee table book. Please feel free to contact me: Charles C. Lancaster III podcast@smartcity2030.org

  20. My dad (Charles Lancaster Jr.) ran the bookshop and bar from 1965-1985 when Rose died. My parents lived across the street in small carriage house @ 905 Morton Street. I was their first of five children and my childhood memories of going to the bookshop remain with me to this day. Did anyone here ever meet my father? He went by the name “Charlie Lancaster”…he had a beard and was in the Coast Guard. My father was born in 1931 and passed away in Spring of 2016. Really miss Baltimore of years ago. So much has changed about the city. I’m collecting Peabody related stories to publish into a coffee table book. Please feel free to contact me: Charles C. Lancaster III podcast@smartcity2030.org

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