City with most historical neighbourhoods people actually live in? (state, map, pros)

[annie_himself]

Originally Posted by Trimac20

Wow, the idea of having many buildings from the 1700s or early 1800s really impresses me. Here, anything before 1940 is old, while only certain inner suburbs have houses dating before 1900, and only here and there not whole districts.

Whats the reasoning behind that?

[waronxmas]

Originally Posted by detroitlove

I often wonder about old neighborhoods with cobblestone streets and homes. Does any of you guys cities have a lot of neighborhoods like that? (it could be brick roads as well not just cobblestone)

A few here and there in Atlanta, but in a lot of the older neighborhoods those streets were paved over with asphalt. Occasionally though in those areas when a pot hole forms in the street, the cobblestone below is exposed. In some instances old streetcar tracks too.

Some examples:

Midtown Atlanta
Cobblestone | Flickr - Photo Sharing! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/15196960@N06/3607721747/ - broken link)


Grant Park
This section of Augusta Place is one of the only remaining cobblestone streets in Atlanta. | Flickr - Photo Sharing! (http://www.flickr.com/photos/blancs-manteaux/5061396746/ - broken link)


For the rest of Georgia though, Savannah takes the cake on this one. Many of it's streets today are still lined with cobblestone.

[ckhthankgod]

Originally Posted by caphillsea77

I always get the feeling of Dutch colonization in Albany. The urban townhomes there sort of have that Amersterdam look.

I live in Salem, MA in a nicely stored house built in 1850 (nice thick wooden walls), this house has great bones. Salem and neighboring towns on the Massachusetts North Shore have some homes dating back to the 1600's. Ipswich has the most. Salem has a large collection of Federalist style homes from the early 1800's.

I believe that the Pastures neighborhood in Albany goes back to the late 1700's.

[rnc2mbfl]

Originally Posted by Trimac20

I'd love to live in say, an old townhouse or brownstone from the 1890s, or a Victorian or something, but which city has the most old housing stock/historical neighbourhoods that haven't changed as much? They can be cities from anywhere from 100,000 up...Boston, Philly etc seem like the most obvious choices, but how well preserved are these neighbourhoods? What about say Charleston, Salem, St. Augustine or Jamestown?

uhhh....just look at which cities were the largest in American at the turn of the 20th Century and still going strong. That should pretty much answer your question.

[nei]

Originally Posted by rah

It doesn't exactly answer the question, but here are a bunch of cities by percentage of residences that were built in 1939 or earlier ("1939 or earlier" is the lower cutoff, data is from the US census, 2005-2009 estimates):

59.2% - St. Louis
58.3% - Boston
55.6% - Cleveland
53.0% - Pittsburgh
51.2% - San Francisco
44.5% - Chicago
42.1% - New York
40.6% - Oakland
40.0% - Philadelphia
39.7% - Baltimore
35.9% - Washington DC
35.7% - Detroit
32.9% - Portland, OR
32.5% - New Orleans
30.7% - Seattle
20.5% - Los Angeles
16.2% - Atlanta
12.5% - Sacramento
10.9% - Miami
7.3% - San Diego
6.2% - San Antonio
5.6% - San Jose
4.9% - Houston
3.6% - Charlotte
1.9% - Phoenix

It's obviously not a complete list of cities or anything, but you can find all the info on the census website, if you go to the fact sheet for any city and look under "Housing Characteristics".

Let's go older. I dug into some census data. Here's 1919 or earlier for some selected cities:

34.7% — Boston
25.7% — Pittsburgh
22.8% — Philadelphia
21.4% — St. Louis
18.3% — New York
15.9% — Chicago

By metro:

24.5% — Boston
16.9% — Providence, RI
14.3% — New York
13.7% — Pittsburgh
12.5% — Philadelphia
8.2% — Chicago
7.6% — St. Louis

for comparison purposes, London, UK [Greater London municipality, but contains about 2/3rds of the metro depending on definition] has 26% of housing from 1919 and earlier.

[MichiVegas]

In sheer numbers? Obviously NYC, probably five times more than anywhere else.

In terms of %? Probably some place like St. Louis, Cincy, Pittsburgh, or Boston. Small boundaries and old housing stock.

[andrea3821]

Originally Posted by Trimac20

I'd love to live in say, an old townhouse or brownstone from the 1890s, or a Victorian or something, but which city has the most old housing stock/historical neighbourhoods that haven't changed as much? They can be cities from anywhere from 100,000 up...Boston, Philly etc seem like the most obvious choices, but how well preserved are these neighbourhoods? What about say Charleston, Salem, St. Augustine or Jamestown?

Milwaukee's northshore suburbs are pretty well preserved. We rented the lower of a converted 1890s home, still had a lot of the original architecture. That entire neighborhood (Shorewood) is pretty well to-do as well as the neighborhoods north of it (Whitefish Bay and Fox Point...but not sure they are quite as old but many richer people live there and the houses are very nice, despite their age). What I imagine to be the oldest part of the city, though, is now one huge ghetto, essentially, and is pretty blighted despite attempts to revitalize it.

St. Augustine...it is the downtown area that the oldest, I believe, and is mostly tourist attractions and shops. People don't really live in that area, and from what I recall (it's been a few years) the surrounding areas are newer housing stock.

[timberline742]

North End of Boston

[grapico]

Yeah was going to say NYC in numbers Brooklyn is loaded with brownstones

[JerseyGirl415]

New York City and Jersey City and Hoboken. I'm obsessed with old brownstones and row houses in general and both are full of them. Also Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, DC.