Highlights of a venue of the arts for decades

Philadelphia has always had a lively arts community. The events below, as selected by The Inquirer's arts reporters, are some of the most memorable in the last 180 years:

1857: The Academy of Music opened. Built in the spirit of Milan's La Scala opera house, the Academy provided a glittering magnet for a growing cultural life.

1876: The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, founded in 1805 and the nation's oldest art school, moved into its landmark Frank Furness/George Hewitt building on North Broad Street, and Philadelphia native Thomas Eakins joined as a teacher and, ultimately, director.

1894: Alexander Milne Calder's 37-foot-tall sculpture of William Penn was placed atop the new City Hall, beginning the city's century-plus relationship with Calder artists, including his son, sculptor Alexander Stirling Calder, and grandson, Alexander "Sandy" Calder, inventor of the mobile.

1899: W.E.B. DuBois, a young sociologist at the University of Pennsylvania, published his classic The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, the product of a year's research in the Seventh Ward. It was the first extensive, empirical look at the sociology of an urban black community.

1902: Germantown-born Owen Wister published The Virginian, the first "cowboy" novel, setting a style with the line, "When you call me that, smile!"

1912: Conductor Leopold Stokowski arrived to take over the Philadelphia Orchestra. He made it into the world-class orchestra that it is, and, over many decades, developed its sound.

1922: Millionaire avant-garde art collector Albert C. Barnes established the Barnes Foundation to implement his theories of art education and appreciation. It was not until 1961 that his collection was opened to the public, and then only on a highly restricted basis.

1928: Atop Fairmount at the end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the first finished section of the new Philadelphia Museum of Art building, devoted to British and American art, was formally opened to the public.

1938: West Chester-born Samuel Barber wrote Adagio for Strings, adapted from his String Quartet. Slow and soulful, Adagio has gone on to become one of the most beloved pieces of music and has been used in many movies.