Levi Rodgers House
Chestertown

This frame house was built on Lot No. 5 of the plat of Chestertown (1830). Constructed around 1740, it was remodeled and enlarged from 1830 to 1840, and again around 1900.

In the 1840s this house, or one nearby, was known as the Cape May Saloon. It was owned and operated by Levi Rodgers, a free black man who lived in Chestertown with his family.

An advertisement for the saloon in the Kent News, dated September 1849, offers oysters "in various ways" and terrapin "in season." Legend that says the late jazz legend Ella Fitzgerald once sang here. Current restoration and addition began in 2004.