Downtown Bellingham is a walkable grid of late-Victorian and early-twentieth-century brick buildings that has been gradually filling in with restaurants, breweries, and independent retailers. Railroad Avenue is the main commercial spine — named for the rail lines that once ran along it — and is where most of the newer restaurant openings have concentrated. The covered Cornwall Park end of downtown is quieter and more residential.
The downtown core contains the SPARK Museum, the Whatcom Museum, and most of the notable historic commercial architecture, including the Flatiron Building and the Leopold Hotel. It's compact enough to explore on foot in an afternoon, with Whatcom Creek marking the western edge where the land drops toward the waterfront redevelopment area.