Midtown is a neighborhood of neighborhoods — Overton Square, Cooper Young, Vollintine Evergreen, and many other distinct communities sit within its borders. Neighborhood identities are strong, but throughout the area, streets are wide and green, hipsters and hundred-year-old houses are commonplace, and politics are generally liberal. Midtown is known for eclectic, local options in food, entertainment, culture, and arts. It’s home to the region’s only art college and the local theater scene, and its main thoroughfares – Cleveland, Cooper, Madison, Poplar, Union, and Young — play host to hundreds of locally-owned businesses to serve any need.
The State Review Board will soon meet in Nashville to determine whether eight historic Tennessee sites meet the criteria to be placed on the National Register of Historic Places. And two of the eight sites are located right here in Memphis.
A micro-urban flower farm first seeded in the backyards of Midtown in 2021 is sprouting up in Cooper-Young with the opening of their first brick-and-mortar storefront.
“With the release of the Mobile Shell, I hope to create more opportunities to support local Memphis artists and nonprofit organizations while making performing arts more accessible to all of Memphis,” says Shell on Wheels Outreach Manager, Yolanda Kelly.
“We are adding roughly 4,700 square feet to the current site,” says CBU Operations Director Alex Smythe.
We all waved the same banner on International Park(ing) Day, writes Reginald Johnson, Sr. “This is how we want our empty spaces and streets to look and feel: safe and beautiful.”
“We all have a responsibility to think through the lens of access — and, for the Shell’s mission, specifically access to the performing arts,” says Natalie Wilson, executive director of Overton Park Shell.
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