H&S Bakery began first as the vision of Isidore Paterakis, an immigrant from Chios, Greece. In 1943, Isidore Paterakis turned H&S Bakery into a reality by going into business with his son-in-law Harry Tsakalos. What began as a small family-owned bakery morphed into a bread-making powerhouse. H&S Bakery expanded throughout the twentieth century to include Northeast Foods and the Schmidt Baking Company. Following in his father’s entrepreneurial spirit, John Paterakis, struck a deal with the fast food giant McDonald’s in the seventies. Based in Baltimore, Northeast Foods, under the management of H & S bakery, is now a supplier of sandwich buns and English muffins for McDonald’s restaurants on the east coast. 

Walking along Boston Street, people will run into a small store called “Canton Market.” Acting as both a convenient store and sandwich shop, Canton Market serves up a variety of sandwiches such as their cheese steak sub and their turkey club. Canton Market is not the first locally owned casual dining spot in this location. Before Canton Market, this lot was home to the Blue Top Diner. 

Bill Tangires, former owner of the Blue Top Diner, started his career working for his father’s business called “Jim’s Lunch.” Bill Tangires continued to work in the food industry and prepared meals for industrial plants. Afterwards in the mid 1960s, Bill Tangires founded the Blue Top Diner.  The Blue Top Diner served diner classics from burgers and vegetable-beef soup, to coffee and chocolate meringue pie. The Blue Top Diner was even recommended in a Baltimore Sun Article alongside the famous Double-T Diner. 

The Blue Top Diner served a variety of people until the year it closed, including “factory workers, truck drivers, dock hands, business people” and even then Maryland senator Barbara Ann Mikulski. In the late eighties, Bill Tangires sold the diner property to Alan Katz, a restaurant chain owner. A Baltimore Sun article detailing the closing of the Blue Top Diner stated, “An avid investor, he [Bill Tangires] hopes to become a stock analyst with a discount brokerage house, perhaps with the First National Bank company.” Although Bill Tangires left the restaurant business to pursue finance, the property of the diner still remains a part of the food business today.

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 A large percentage of cannery employees came from east Baltimore’s Polish community. Populating most of Fells Point, Polish families looked to canneries for work. Polish women and children worked at canneries alongside men in order to earn increased wages. Workers’ wages played a vital role in the debate for the ten-hour work day. Cannery workers in favor of the ten-hour work day argued that canning companies overworked their employees. By contrast, cannery workers against the ten-hour day argued that workers should be allowed to work however many hours it takes to make a liveable wage. Workers against the ten-hour law stated in one Baltimore Sun article, “that restricting the hours of labor would deprive the women of an opportunity to earn a living; that the season was short and must, therefore, yield them the largest possible earnings…” 

While Polish cannery workers lived in Fells Point, the Polish community did not remain in east Baltimore for the entire year, but rather moved according to the seasons. At the end of the Baltimore City canning season in August, the Polish community in east Baltimore temporarily relocated to the Maryland countryside in search of employment from corn and tomato canneries. Working conditions in the country varied, but overall were still undesirable. In one particular camp, workers had to make their own kitchens from wooden planks and cloth; in another camp cannery waste covered the floor of the employee’s sleeping quarters.  At the end of the countryside canning season, Polish workers returned to east Baltimore to enjoy a meager one week of rest before leaving for the oyster canneries in the south.

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Edward J. Codd founded the E. J. Codd Company in the 1850s. The E. J. Codd  Company focused on industrial machinery and aided Baltimore’s booming shipbuilding industry by assembling boilers, propellers, and engines. At the turn of the century, Baltimore workers went on strike demanding the nine-hour work day. The E. J. Codd strikers proved victorious when in 1899, the company agreed to give workers the nine-hour work day with their former pay. Edward Codd, like other captains of industry in Gilded Age America, was not only a man of business, but a philanthropist. According to a Baltimore Sun article published on Christmas Eve in 1905, Edward Codd gave 460 children of east Baltimore each a nickel on Christmas Eve. In addition to handing out nickels each Christmas Eve, Edward Codd reportedly gave children each a penny every other day of the year. Back in the early twentieth-century, a nickel could buy children a goodly amount of candy and one reporter even reported that children’s “bright red wheelbarrows” filled with “painted candies” dotted the street on Christmas Eve. Needless to say, Edward Codd was well-liked by the children of east Baltimore.  After World War II, the Codd family sold the company to Ray Kauffman. Kauffman expanded the company to include “Codd Fabricators and Boiler Co.” and “Baltimore Lead Burning.” Under Kauffman, the E. J. Codd Company served many local Baltimore businesses such as Bethlehem Steel, Allied Chemical, and even the American Visionary Arts Museum located right down the road from the Baltimore Museum of Industry.  

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In 1894, William G. Scarlett founded the William G. Scarlett Seed Company. Born in Baltimore in 1873, George D. Scarlett was a true entrepreneur who chased the American dream. At twenty-one, George Scarlett began working in the seed industry by “importing seeds from various parts of the world and exporting dried apples." Under the management of George Scarlett, the company expanded its inventory; selling grass, grain, and bird seeds. A Baltimore Sun article stated that “his [George Scarlett’s] business mushroomed principally through his own efforts and at one time was the largest east of the Mississippi River." Although the William G. Scarlett Seed Company expanded opening branches in other cities, Baltimore remained the company headquarters.

In 1879, Charles T. Bagby and A. D. Rivers founded the Bagby and Rivers Furniture Company, the predecessor to the Bagby Furniture Company. Bagby and Rivers manufactured furniture and in their 1882 furniture catalog, the company advertises mainly cabinetry.By the turn of the century, Charles T. Bagby was the sole owner of the company which was rebranded the “Bagby Furniture Company.” Charles T. Bagby ran Bagby Furniture until the 1930s, when he sold the company to his distant cousin William Hugh Bagby.

William Hugh Bagby was a man full of ambition. Before becoming president of the Bagby Furniture Company, William Hugh Bagby had actually worked for the company as a salesman. From the position of salesman, William Hugh Bagby began his own business before buying out the Bagby Furniture Company. Under the management of William Hugh Bagby, the company switched from furniture manufacturing to selling wholesale furniture in the forties. William Hugh Bagby passed away in 1988 and his son William Hugh Bagby Jr. became the company president.William Hugh Bagby Jr ran the company until 1990, when Bagby Furniture permanently closed. The furniture company could not compete with the lower prices manufacturers were offering customers if customers purchased furniture directly from the manufacturer.

After the Bagby Company closed their doors, a variety of development plans came up for the property. In 1993, a Baltimore Sun article stated that the Henrietta Corporation intended to build a luxury apartment complex on the property. In 2017, the Atlas Restaurant Group redeveloped the Bagby property into a collection of four Italian restaurants including Tagliata, Italian Disco, the Elk Room, and Monarque. The Bagby building which used to produce furniture, now serves as entertainment for patrons who want dinner and a show.

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