Baltimore Population Drop Slows as ’Wire’ Image May Be Receding

Mike Tsamouras, the owner of a Baltimore bakery, watched his city shrink for five decades, leaving neighborhoods with rows of vacant homes, their marble steps leading to boarded-up doors.

As factory jobs disappeared, so did the people and the merchant stalls that once lined the sidewalk outside the 19th-century Hollins Market, where he works. During the 1970s, the city lost almost 1,000 residents a month as whites rattled by racial tensions moved to the suburbs.