This article is about an historic district in Atlanta. For the Baltimore red-light district

Red-light district

A red-light district is a part of an urban area where there is a concentration of prostitution and sex-oriented businesses, such as sex shops, strip clubs, adult theaters, etc...

, see The Block (Baltimore)

The Block (Baltimore)

Baltimore's The Block is a stretch on the 400 block of East Baltimore Street in Baltimore, Maryland containing several strip clubs, sex shops, and other adult entertainment merchants. In the first half of the 20th century, it was famous for its burlesque houses...

.

Baltimore Block is a series of eight rowhouses in the SoNo

SoNo (Atlanta)

SoNo is an urban sub-district of Downtown Atlanta, Georgia, part of Midtown. Much of the area originally consisted of slum areas such as Buttermilk Bottom, which were razed for urban redevelopment projects in the 1960s...

 district of Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta, Georgia

Atlanta is the capital and most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia. According to the 2010 census, Atlanta's population is 420,003. Atlanta is the cultural and economic center of the Atlanta metropolitan area, which is home to 5,268,860 people and is the ninth largest metropolitan area in...

. Rowhouses of the kind that are abundant in Baltimore

Baltimore

Baltimore is the largest independent city in the United States and the largest city and cultural center of the US state of Maryland. The city is located in central Maryland along the tidal portion of the Patapsco River, an arm of the Chesapeake Bay. Baltimore is sometimes referred to as Baltimore...

 are an unusual housing type in Atlanta, where duplexes or semidetached housing, such as shotgun house

Shotgun house

The shotgun house is a narrow rectangular domestic residence, usually no more than 12 feet wide, with doors at each end. It was the most popular style of house in the Southern United States from the end of the American Civil War , through the 1920s. Alternate names include shotgun shack,...

s, were more common forms of high-density housing. Built in 1885 by Baltimore native Jacob J. Rosenthal, the houses were leased on long-term ground lease terms, a common practice in Baltimore. By the 1920s, the houses began to fall out of fashion, and four units were torn down while the others became derelict. A recovery began in the 1930s, and in the 1960s the area became a center of counterculture. Extensive renovation took place during the 1980s, when the units were consolidated and converted to office use.

Like many Baltimore houses, the brick three-story rowhouses of Baltimore Block present a unified wall-like front to the street with a continuous cornice

Cornice

Cornice molding is generally any horizontal decorative molding that crowns any building or furniture element: the cornice over a door or window, for instance, or the cornice around the edge of a pedestal. A simple cornice may be formed just with a crown molding.The function of the projecting...

line.

External links

• Baltimore Block, Atlanta Urban Design Commission
• Baltimore Block, GeorgiaInfo