Cabbagetown, Georgia

Cabbagetown has a unique culture, known for its street art and its popular Chomp and Stomp Bluegrass and Chili Festival held each November. A neighborhood of Atlanta, Cabbagetown encompasses the Cabbagetown Historic District and is famed as the location of Fulton Mill Lofts, the largest residential loft community in the country.

Cabbagetown is small, less than 100 acres, so walking is easy. Walkability is as much a part of the neighborhood as the street art that personifies it. The Krog Street Tunnel and CSX Hulsey Railyard wall along Wylie Street are prime "galleries." Cabbagetown itself is a hip, close-to-town neighborhood, but you're as likely to find locals sitting on their front porches or working at the community garden. It's a neighborly place to live and to visit. Visitors come to see the art and sample the local eateries.

Carroll Street is the neighborhood's heart, serving as a hub for popular restaurants frequented by the artists, musicians, young families, and professionals who have embraced Cabbagetown as their own. Cabbagetown now promotes and reveres its street art, and actually commissioned a welcome mural at the Krog Street Tunnel in 2012. The former graffiti and tags in the tunnel, along with other street art, is now managed by the Wallkeepers Committee of the Cabbagetown Initiative.

Originally known as Factory Town or Fulton Mill Village, the neighborhood was developed in the late 1800s by the mill owner to house workers. Homes were primarily small cottages and one- or two-story shotgun houses built along short, narrow streets surrounding the mill. The mill closed in 1977, but during the 1980s an influx of artists brought revitalization and tremendous growth to the area, followed in 1996 by an ambitious effort to transform the mill itself into trendy loft housing.