Faidley’s is as much about the people as the seafood. Whether gathered around the store’s raw bar at one of the stand-up tables near the busy line of workers making crab cakes, customers are often feel like they’re simply sharing a meal with old friends.

Faidley’s started out at Lexington Market in 1886 when John and Flossie Faidley combined their seafood stall with the adjoining business to form Smith & Faidley’s seafood. John’s son, Edward took over the business before World War II, and, 1948, John W. Faidley, Jr. joined him and changed the name of the company to John W. Faidley’s seafood.

A major fire at Lexington Market that same year forced the business to move to the Lexington Market garage but Faidley’s was one of the first establishments to return to the new Lexington Marker in 1952. The idea of selling prepared foods at the stall originated around this time, reportedly after customers smelled a fish sandwich John, Jr. was making for himself—and asked if they could buy one. In 1966, the Liquor Board gave Faidley’s a liquor license making it the first bar in the long history of Lexington Market. John W. Faidley applied for the license after he and his regular customer agreed that “it just isn’t right” to eat crabcakes and steam crabs with no beer to drink.

Over the past twenty years, Faidley’s has won international renown for its crab cakes. The current recipe was created in 1987 by Nancy Faidley Devine, John’s daughter. That was the same year she resumed working at the “family firm” where her husband Bill Devine had worked since he finished a term of military service in 1964.

Not long after, food critics started making their way to Lexington Market and featuring Faidley’s in national publications including the New York Times, Bon Appetit, Gourmet, and USA Today. Baltimore Magazine gave Faidley’s the “Best Crab Cake” award so many times the magazine had to retire the category. Faidley’s even worked with Old Bay to prepare crab cakes for astronauts on the space shuttle. Unfortunately, NASA officials cancelled their order at the last minute over worries that oil might escape from the crab cake under zero gravity conditions.

The future of Faidley’s Seafood looks just as promising as the past. Damye Devine Hahn, Nancy and Bill’s daughter, is now an integral part of the business and is keeping up Faidley’s fresh seafood and out-of-this-world crab cakes.

203 N. Paca Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

The Seminary Chapel at the St. Mary's Spiritual Center is a historic gem. Completed in 1808, the chapel was designed by Maximilian Godefroy, the architect of many historically important structures in Baltimore including the Battle Monument and First Unitarian Church. Godefroy boasted that the chapel was the first Gothic building in the United States. The great hoop shape of the interior is similar to the interior of the chapel at Versailles, and its use of Georgian details reflects the complexities of early American architecture.

600 N. Paca Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

The L. Gordon & Son factory is a sixty-four thousand square foot industrial building on the corner of South Paca Street and West Cross Street, a few blocks from M&T Stadium. It is a three-story building of lightly-ornamented but utilitarian brick, with a Star of David design in the brickwork at the top. In the past century, the factory has housed at least four family businesses and each one has left their mark.

Fr. Bergner & Co. erected the factory on Paca Street, designed by architect J. Edward Sperry, in 1905. Two brothers, Frederick and William Bergner, ran the company for over 25 years manufacturing picture frames, photo albums, and other small luxuries. William died in 1902, leaving behind his parents, three brothers, and wife. It was Frederick who moved the business to the new factory and continued to oversee the company until his death in 1919.

The onset of the Great Depression, however, was a greater challenge than fire. In 1930, the company began leasing out the top floor of the Paca and Cross Street factory. In 1931, the company sold two tracts of land adjoining the Paca and Cross Street factory, one to the city to expand Sterrett Street, the other to the Catholic Church. By 1933, at the trial for a fraud case involving forty-two shares of Bergner & Co. stock, the prosecuting attorney implied that “the company consisted only of an empty warehouse.” In March 1933, Fr. Bergner & Co.’s remaining assets were seized, and in 1934 the court-appointed trustee sold the Paca and Cross Street factory to The Hopkins Place Savings Bank, who had held the mortgage for $47,000.By 1940, L. Gordon & Son was operating out of the Paca & Cross Street factory and they purchased the building in 1942. Paca and Cross Street was at least L. Gordon & Son’s third factory in the fifty years since its founding, but the firm would remain in that building for the next sixty years.

L. Gordon & Son was, as the name suggests, a family-owned business. Louis Gordon started the enterprise in 1891, making paper boxes by hand at his house on Orleans Street. He was a Russian Jewish immigrant, and his son Paul was, from the time he was a young man, an active participant in several Jewish and Zionist organizations in Baltimore.

Given his spiritual and political affiliations, it seems likely that Gordon installed the six-pointed star design at the top of the outer wall of the factory around the time they acquired the building. In 1897, the six-pointed star, known as a 'Magen David', was adopted as a symbol by the First Zionist Congress. From that point forward, the star became a symbol of Jewishness in general in the early twentieth century. The crest of Hadassah, the women’s branch of the American Zionist movement and the organization to which Paul Gordon's wife belonged, included the Magen David in their crest design at least as early as 1915.

After Paul's death the company passed to his son, Bertram I. Gordon. In 1951, L. Gordon & Son bought several lots surrounding their factory from Barnett L. Silver, who had spent the last decade buying them up from individual homeowners. Besides buying up half of the block at Paca & Cross Street, Gordon & Son also added a warehouse in 1967 at 2020 Hollins Ferry Road.

In May 1985, Bertram Gordon died of a heart attack. His widow Marjorie Gordon took over the company after his death, and it remained in operation at least through 1991. Marjorie Gordon died in 2009 at the age of eighty. The company sold the factory to Toybox, LLC, in 1997, and it has remained largely empty ever since.

1050 S. Paca Street, Baltimore, MD 21230

Lexington Market, originally known as Western or New Market, was started at the western edge of the city at the turn of the 19th century to take advantage of the trade with the recently opened Northwest Territory. The first market shed was built c. 1805 on land once belonging to John Eager Howard. It grew quickly along with the city, which was advantageously situated on the western most harbor along the East Coast. This access to transatlantic trade routes, then the railroads, were major factors to the growth of Baltimore through the 19th century. After a visit to the market, Ralph Waldo Emerson dubbed it the “gastronomic capital of the world.”

The larger and more established public markets, like Centre, Hanover, and Broadway markets, were often used for court ordered auctions of enslaved people. Having been located at the edge of the city, there is not much evidence that such sales were common at Lexington Market. The only information found so far indicates that at least one such auction did take place here in 1838. A monument was recently erected here to memorialize the woman sold at that court-ordered auction and a runaway enslaved man who had worked at the market. Their names were Rosetta and Robert.

Hotels and taverns proliferated near public markets, including this area around Lexington Market. It was a common practice during this time to arrange business meetings in hotels and taverns, to such an extent that bartenders and inn keepers would take and relay messages for regular customers. The meetings could be business or social. Transactions discussed could be anything from starting a chapter of a fraternal organization to the selling and buying of real estate, farm animals, or enslaved people. Many slave traders got their start in this manner--Slatter, Woolfolk, and Purvis to name a few. An example of an ad from the early 19th century informed buyers of people “to apply at Mr. Lilly’s Tavern, Howard Street” and another directed buyers to “Fowler’s Tavern near the New Market, Lexington Street.” The latter of these might be William Fowler’s Sign of the Sunflower, which was located in this area.

Although the original intention of the market was to sell Maryland-grown produce, by the turn of the twentieth century, the market offered an international selection as thousands of immigrants moved to Baltimore, becoming both vendors and customers. The city kept the price to rent a stall at the market low to encourage aspiring business owners. This practice was particularly beneficial for immigrants who had few job opportunities upon entering the country. As a result, immigrant communities grew around Lexington Market and helped establish a diverse community in West Baltimore. The new products offered at the market contributed to the international fame it would attain at the turn of the century.

While the form of Lexington Market has changed dramatically over the decades — an early frame market shed was replaced in 1952 following a 1949 fire and the city significantly expanded the market in the 1980s — the community of vendors and locals continues to draw crowds of residents and tourists daily.

400 W. Lexington Street, Baltimore, MD 21201

On June 16, 1808, Elizabeth Bayley Seton arrived at St. Mary's Seminary in Baltimore on the same day that Bishop John Carroll, the first bishop in the Unites States, dedicated the seminary's newly built chapel. Elizabeth came to Baltimore from New York to set up a boarding school for girls. During her one-year stay in what is now the Mother Seton House, she took the vows of a Daughter of Charity, thus cementing her conversion and commitment to Catholicism. Following her start in Baltimore, Mother Seton, as Bishop Carroll dubbed her, went on to found Saint Joseph's Academy and Free School in Emmitsburg, Maryland, the first free school for girls in America, and the Sisters of Charity of St. Joseph, the first apostolic community of women in the United States.

The St. Mary's Spiritual Center, as the location is now called, is also the original home of St. Mary's Seminary, the first seminary in America. The seminary has trained a number of notables, including: Mother Mary Elizabeth Lange, a Haitian immigrant who founded the Oblate Sisters of Providence (the first African American Catholic community) and St. Francis High School; Father Gabriel Richard, who is called "The Second Founder of Detroit"; and Father Michael McGivney, who went on to found the Knights of Columbus in Connecticut.

600 N. Paca Street, Baltimore, MD 21201