As Baltimore brokerage houses go, the firm of Chapin, Davis is one that has stayed - thanks to the fact that it's staid.

It remains firmly planted in the North Baltimore community where it was founded a half-century ago, refusing to relocate downtown to the financial district that is home to most of its better-known competitors. The area it's entrenched in is home to many a Baltimore notable, who believe in the old-school way of letting friends manage their money.

Proof of its deep-rooted ties to Baltimore's patrician social circles can be seen in a plain, green hardbound volume tucked away in a backroom cabinet at the Chapin, Davis office. It's a list of clients from the early years, and among them is an unmistakable name - Edgar Allan Poe.

Well, actually, it's Edgar A. Poe III, the great-great-great-nephew of the famous writer who died in Baltimore. But it's apropos that a Poe once invested here - this is Chapin, Davis, after all, synonymous with a true-blue Baltimore identity.

Unlike the Baltimore name of Alex. Brown - the oldest investment house in the nation, purchased by Deutsche Banc a few years ago - Chapin, Davis has kept its name going into the 21st century. The firm celebrated its 50th anniversary yesterday.

"In a way, we haven't kept up with the times," said Talbot Jones Albert IV, 43, a broker whose sister and father also are employed as brokers at the firm. But, Albert says, keeping up with times and trends isn't what Chapin, Davis is all about.

H. Chace Davis Jr., one of the founding partners who is now retired, said the business has been his life's calling. "We started out with people our age, our friends who obviously trusted us," Davis, 76, said. "The circle did grow. And nothing, nothing ever pleased me more than making money for people."

'A lot of integrity'

At the firm's anniversary bash yesterday in the Cross Keys office, some of the clients named in the green book surfaced, among them Poe, 77, and Joseph S. Keelty, 80.

Poe said a group of people, loosely affiliated, invested with the firm some 40 years ago. "A bunch of us had money with them then," recalled Poe, who attended the Gilman School in the 1930s.

Keelty, a developer and builder, said he started playing cards and golf at the Baltimore Country Club with Bedford Chapin, a founding partner, when they were in their 20s.

"There was a lot of integrity there, and never were you misled about things," Keelty said.

Chapin, who died last year at 77, was born and raised in Roland Park and graduated from the St. Paul's School, where a hall recently was named in his honor.

Other clients said that in a world of depersonalized banking and finance, a smaller firm whose employees have more time to spend on individual accounts is welcome.

"I got quicker decision-making access and went to visit companies I invested in with both Bedford [Chapin] and Chace [Davis]," said Harvey L. Miller, who manages his family retail and real estate business. "You don't have this with a big brokerage."

The president today is R. Bruce Alderman Jr., 43, who said he was mentored over 10 years at the firm by the jocular Chapin, who always addressed him as, "My boy." Alderman, portfolio manager Gale Costa and a staff of 20 full-time and 16 part-time brokers manage about $420 million in assets, Alderman said, serving 3,500 clients.

As Alderman leafed through the green book, he expressed awe at the collection of names. "In that book is the old line, a 'who's who' of Baltimore."

In the more immediate and complex financial picture today, the firm retains its hold. Costa reflects the firm's staid staying power in her refusal to follow the 1990s craze for Internet stocks. "They left me in the dust," she said. "I was very boring and dull in this period, watching the paint dry."

Now she and others face a bleak bear market every morning during one of the worst slumps that Davis can remember. His advice to brokers with clients in hard times: "Feel their pain. Suffer with them."

Its clientele and brokers today are more eclectic than its history might suggest, but the company is still firmly planted in the same community soil. The brokerage does business in Cross Keys, far from the high-towered financial districts, preferring the environs of a residential neighborhood. It's easier to just drop by that way.

"Oh my soul, no, we never ever considered moving, because you would lose the people from Guilford and Roland Park who like to see their broker firsthand," said Davis. "They expect a one-on-one relationship."

'A lot of fun'

Davis recalled the way Chapin - whom he met through his cousin Francis A. Davis - proposed that he join him as a full partner even though Davis knew next to nothing about finance.

"He said, 'I think you'd have a lot of fun, and I know I'd have a lot of fun,'" Davis said. "Five minutes later, I said 'yes.' It was a remarkably generous offer."

The initial investment came to about $20,000 for each of them, Davis said, all the money he had in the world.

In short order, Davis quit working in his family's wholesale tobacco business to join Chapin, who had established a small mutual-fund business. Anne Chapin, his widow, said she made curtains for her husband's first office on 21st Street.

Armed with the optimism of the times, the new partnership soon anchored in the Roland Park shopping center just a few doors down from Morgan Millard drugstore, known for its soda-fountain lunches.

Chapin and Davis had a two-sided desk in what seemed more like a country cottage than an office. They employed Sally Hester, who made sure the books were balanced.

And to remind them of the market's perils, they papered an entire wall with defunct stock certificates, calling it "the wall of warning."