Midtown is where Memphis residents actually live. The neighborhood runs east of downtown along Poplar Avenue and Union Avenue, centered on the enormous green space of Overton Park — 342 acres of old-growth forest, golf course, zoo, and art museum in the middle of the city. The park's famous story (a Supreme Court case in 1971 blocked an interstate highway that would have cut through it) is embedded in the local identity. Cooper-Young, the neighborhood's commercial heart, sits at the intersection of Cooper Street and Young Avenue: two or three blocks of independent restaurants, record shops, vintage clothing stores, coffee shops, and bars that draw people from across the city on weekends.
The Victorian Village district along Adams Avenue preserves a row of antebellum and Victorian-era mansions that survived when much of the surrounding area was redeveloped. The Woodruff-Fontaine House and the Mallory-Neely House are open for tours. Midtown's architecture is generally a mix of Craftsman bungalows and 1920s apartment buildings, with the occasional grand mansion on the larger streets. The neighborhood has a noticeably diverse character — ethnically, economically, and in terms of who's walking the sidewalks at any given time.