Decorum is not the rule. Vendors vie for attention-each claiming to offer the freshest, the ripest, the plumpest, the best. Night and Day Baltimore has a storied past as a blue-collar town when manufacturing and shipping formed the core of its base. Its work force included sailors, longshoremen, steel workers, shipbuilders. Many made their home along with fellow immigrants in one of the ethnic communities that sprouted up around the docks.
Simple Pleasures Consider the rowhouse.
Perhaps no other style of dwelling is more typically Baltimore. Little Italy, Fell's Point, Highlandtown, Patterson Park. It's a safe bet that future anthropologists will have a field day explaining Formstone, a Baltimore architectural phenomenon that covers real bricks with fake stone. The seemingly anachronistic tradition of Flower Mart, held the first Tuesday in May, has charmed Baltimoreans since 1915. Baltimore is also home to the first Catholic Diocese in America, established in 1789.