Many Memphians consider Midtown Memphis, the neighborhood you have entered, the true soul of their city. Midtown grew up in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries as streetcar lines extended east from Downtown, and it became home to a remarkable mix of commercial corridors, single-family homes, bungalows, and apartment buildings. The neighborhood has always had a more eclectic, bohemian character than the rest of Memphis — a place where artists, musicians, professors, and longtime residents of every background have lived side by side with more comfort than most Southern cities managed.
Midtown's commercial corridors — Madison Avenue, Poplar Avenue, Union Avenue — still anchor neighborhood life with independent restaurants, coffee shops, and small businesses. The neighborhood weathered the white flight of the 1960s and 70s and the urban disinvestment of subsequent decades through the stubbornness of its residents and the quality of its housing stock. Today Midtown is experiencing renewed interest from young residents drawn to its walkability, its tree-canopied streets, and its identity as a place where Memphis's full complexity is visible on a single block.