Yes, I remember that too, riding through Baltimore in the back of my parents’ car in the ‘50s on the way to Atlantic City. We’d marvel at the row houses, block after block of marble stoops. We’d also roll up the windows because the city smelled so bad. Mostly, it was an industrial rotten egg smell, but even the spice scent from the McCormack factory was too overwhelming.
Well, it does have a lot of salt water...
I went to school with a guy that grew up partly in Baltimore. He said that in his day, some people would be out scrubbing the marble steps on weekends, but as the demographic changed, fewer and fewer were doing it.