MAP & PARCEL
Names
In Harlem, NoMa, and Sweet Auburn, a street's name is how the claim to land near downtown gets made, whether to hold the place or to sell it.The photograph that started this chapter was taken on the clock. I was in Harlem on an appraisal assignment, and when I walked to the corner I looked up at the
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Sweet Auburn, Atlanta
In Atlanta's Sweet Auburn, a community named its street for the proximity that made it valuable. Then a highway took it. Now the name is what brings it back.John Wesley Dobbs named this street, and he was precise about why he called it sweet. Not only the money that circulated here - and money did
MAP & PARCEL
NoMa, Washington DC
In NoMa, one business improvement district commissioned a mural about children belonging, painted on a luxury tower's wall, reproduced a demolished mural as advertising, and coined the district's market name. Paint and paper on one block.On the side of a building next to Swampoodle Park, in the Wash
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Harlem, New York
On one Harlem signpost, Lenox Avenue sits above Malcolm X Boulevard, the surveyor's name and the community's claim on the same street. A renaming is a claim on a place.On a Harlem signpost, one street carries two names. “Lenox Av” on top. “Malcolm X Boulevard” underneath. Neither has erased the othe
MAP & PARCEL
Names
In Harlem, NoMa, and Sweet Auburn, a street's name is how the claim to land near downtown gets made, whether to hold the place or to sell it.The photograph that started this chapter was taken on the clock. I was in Harlem on an appraisal assignment, and when I walked to the corner I looked up at the
MAP & PARCEL
Sweet Auburn, Atlanta
In Atlanta's Sweet Auburn, a community named its street for the proximity that made it valuable. Then a highway took it. Now the name is what brings it back.John Wesley Dobbs named this street, and he was precise about why he called it sweet. Not only the money that circulated here - and money did
MAP & PARCEL
Conversions
How four building conversions — factory, church, school, office tower — reveal where a neighborhood is headed, read from what its empty buildings become.There are two phrases from my profession I want to put down at the start, because the whole month runs on them.The first is functional obsolescence
MAP & PARCEL
The Steeple Still Stands Over the Block
Aging congregations, changing neighborhoods, and churches converting to condos — plus why streaming empties the sanctuary differently than TV ever did. The slowest conversion, and the one that says most about who a place was for. Field note from Map & Parcel.A church built to hold hundreds on a Sund
MAP & PARCEL
The Name Is Still Carved Over the Door
School-to-apartment conversion was the fastest-growing adaptive reuse segment in the U.S. in 2024 — emptied not by failure but by demographics. The one conversion driven by people, not technology. Field note from Map & Parcel.The name of the school is carved over the door, in the stone, where they u
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Downtown Cleveland, Ohio
WFH is emptying coastal office towers, and the talk is all about converting them to housing — as if it were new. Cleveland has run that cycle for fifty years. The disruptor changes; the cycle doesn't. Field note from Map & Parcel.Right now, on the coasts, the office towers are emptying. The work mov
MAP & PARCEL
The Same Building Keeps Converting
A cotton mill in Southeastern Massachusetts, a loft block in Lower Manhattan, a leather warehouse in Boston, Bell Labs in the West Village — built for work that left, and converted when the neighborhood caught up. Field note from Map & Parcel.Built for work that left. Filled when the neighborhood ca
MAP & PARCEL
Painted Claims
In Mott Haven, Lower Roxbury, Ohio City, and Overtown, public murals make claims the deeds don't. Reading neighborhoods with both eyes open.Kings and Queens, Ananda Nahu, 2016. The freeway retaining wall, Ohio City, Cleveland. Photo: Ananda Nahu project archive.A neighborhood marks itself in two reg
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Overtown, Miami
Kyle Holbrook's 1,200-foot Overtown Hope Mural wraps a utility fence in the neighborhood I-95 cut in half — in the shadow of Brickell's towers.Overtown Hope Mural, with the Brickell towers behind. 60 NW 17th Street, Overtown, Miami. Photo: Kyle Holbrook / MLK Mural Project archive.The fourth wall is
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Ohio City, Cleveland
Ananda Nahu painted the children of Lakeview Terrace thirty feet tall on the freeway wall that divides Cleveland's public housing from its brewery district.Kings and Queens, detail — three of the children of Lakeview Terrace across the 620-foot wall. Photo: Eve Moss.Ohio City was founded in 1836, an
MAP & PARCEL
Lower Roxbury, Boston
A Douglass mural at Boston's Douglass Square looks at two developments — one that kept its affordability promise, one that let it expire.Frederick Douglass mural, Douglass Square. Tremont and Lenox, Lower Roxbury, Boston. Photo: Eve Moss.At the corner of Tremont and Lenox, in a neighborhood that was
MAP & PARCEL
Mott Haven, New York
Lula Goce's four-story mural names the child the South Bronx block has to hold — and what the deed underneath might say in five years.Coral, Lula Goce. Mott Haven, the Bronx. Photo: Eve Moss.On the side of a five-story building in the South Bronx, a girl stands four stories tall. Her hair is in two