We'll swing by and pick it up!

Having mentioned the birthplace of the Sousaphone in the post below, we may now speculate as to just when Sousa and/or Conrad may have swung by the Pepper building at 8th and Locust in Philadelphia to pick up the new horn (assuming, of course, that's how it went down - work with me!).

View of offices on the second floor of the Pepper building from the 1894 catalogue

Here's what we know for sure:

• Pepper built and named the Sousaphone at some point during or just prior to October 1895.
• It was played on all or part of the Sousa Band's three month cross-country tour that launched on January 1, 1896 in Washington, D.C.
• Nine days and nine concerts later, that tour made a two-day stop in Philadelphia, where the Sousa Band performed three times at the Academy of Music. Here's the notice in the Philadelphia Inquirer on December 29, 1895:

• The Academy of Music, which was built way back in 1857 and is still being used today, is located at the southwest corner of Broad and Locust Streets:

The Academy is the first reddish-brown building on the left

Here's how it looked in 1910

• Pepper's building was just down the street on Locust - a mere six blocks away (see map below: the Academy is noted by the red tag; the Pepper building would have been right where that little yellow man is located at the bottom right):

That seems pretty convenient to me! Could it be that Pepper's new instrument was picked up at that time and taken on the rest of that tour? Who knows!