Best Old House Neighborhoods 2011: Cottages & Bungalows

Whittier Mill Village, Atlanta, Georgia

• Houses surround a 22-acre park
• Quiet wooded lots
• 15 minutes from downtown Atlanta

The Neighborhood
Jan Stephens and her husband were struggling to find a desirable, and affordable, neighborhood near downtown Atlanta—until they discovered Whittier Mill Village. "We had no idea this place existed," Jan says. "A lot of people in Atlanta have never heard of it." Hidden on the city's largely industrial northwest side, along the Chattahoochee River, the residential area was established in the late 1800s for employees of the Whittier Cotton Mills. It started with 30 wood-frame cottages, and many more went up during a 1920s expansion. After the mill shut down, in 1971, the houses remained occupied but the settlement was more or less forgotten by Atlantans. Then, in 1994, the Trust for Public Land purchased the factory property and turned it into a 22-acre park, considerably raising the area's cachet.

Shown: A former multifamily worker's cottage got the wraparound treatment in 2001.