For more than two decades, the windows of the Craig Flinner Gallery brimmed with large, graphic, colorful antique French posters, bringing a particular joie de vivre to the 500 block of N. Charles St. Inside, the walls were jammed with more posters, maps and paintings and shared space with antique and vintage furniture, architectural salvage, ephemera and other surprises. Glorious colors and patterns and textures abounded.

This is the type of sophisticated yet affordable shopping downtown Baltimore needs more of. So news that the gallery would be closing its doors and moving to Hampden, after 25 years in Mount Vernon, should prompt some serious soul-searching on the part of the Downtown Partnership, Charles Street Development Corp., Historic Charles Street Association, Baltimore Development Corp. and Mayor Sheila Dixon.

Businesses catering to the carriage trade once lined North Charles Street, though shifting demographics and fear of crime shuttered many of them decades ago. Still, retail persevered along what was often known as Baltimore's Fifth Avenue. The confidence that Harborplace inspired marched north, and the gallery was just one of many new retail ventures opened in the 1980s and 1990s, flourishing and expanding several times over.

But in the past few years, the retail climate has changed, and not just along Charles Street. The homogenization and relative convenience of the mall shopping experience - prized by some consumers, forced down the throats of others - siphoned off ever-increasing numbers of shoppers. As Charles Street retail moved out, more offices and restaurants moved in.

This is good news, I suppose, for those interested in being able to go to any Williams-Sonoma in Anytown, U.S.A., to buy the exact copper cookie cutter set shown on Page 6 of the catalog, and to carry purchases to their cars parked free of charge in mall lots.

Retail has further evolved/regressed in some markets, as consumers have tired of the antiseptic sameness of enclosed malls, and fake main streets have popped up. Some are built in faux architectural styles and others make no pretense, but the stores are still mostly interchangeable from strip to strip.

The lack of a critical mass of shops has created a downward spiral in the number of shoppers. Combined with the ever-persistent parking shortage, Mr. Flinner, a Baltimore resident and true-blue advocate of cities whom I know well, made the wrenching decision to pack up and move.

He understands the pall his darkened, cavernous retail space will cast over the neighborhood, yet he is powerless to fix what ails this main street, including customers who are increasingly more interested in the Disney version offered at White Marsh and Hunt Valley, where everything is predictable and the colors are all the same.

Donna Beth Joy Shapiro is a Baltimore writer and former Charles Village shop and restaurant owner. Her e-mail is dbjs@charm.net.