Flowers for Warren, RI

Warren wears its history on the waterfront. It was a colonial shipbuilding and whaling port, later an oyster and textile town, and today the old brick mills and the low storefronts along Water and Main Streets hold antiques dealers, potters, and restaurants instead of looms. Deliveries here move through that village grain: a bouquet to a shop on Water Street, another to a cottage out on the Touisset peninsula where the land narrows between the Warren and Kickemuit rivers, a third to one of the tidy homes lining the East Bay Bike Path that follows the old railroad bed north toward Barrington. It is a short town to cross, so the honest obstacles are the drawbridge, the pinch of summer traffic funneling toward Bristol, and knowing which mill building holds which studio or office.

Other Rhode Island cities.