High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! The Peale Museum, also known as the Municipal Museum of Baltimore, was a museum of paintings and natural history, located in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. It occupied the first building in the Western Hemisphere to be designed and built as a museum. The Peale Museum was created by Charles Willson Peale. The museum closed in 1997 and its collections were handed over to the Maryland Historical Society. The building was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965.