Living in Midtown, Houston

Bagby Park's green lawn breaks up the density of Midtown's apartment towers, a patch of shade wedged between blocks of restaurants and bars along Main and Travis. METRORail's Red Line runs straight through the neighborhood, putting the Museum District, downtown, and points north within an easy ride that skips the need for a car on most trips. High-rise and mid-rise apartment buildings have replaced much of the neighborhood's older housing stock over the past few decades, giving Midtown a denser, more vertical skyline than most of the surrounding inner loop. Restaurants and cocktail bars fill the ground floors along Main Street, with patio seating and happy-hour crowds keeping the sidewalks busy from late afternoon through last call.

That density cuts both ways: the same bars that fill Main and Travis by evening keep some residential blocks loud well past midnight, an honest cost for anyone hoping for an early bedtime this close to the strip.

A dense grid of streets keeps most errands, from groceries to a haircut, within a few minutes' walk, and the Red Line stop means an apartment door here can double as the start of a night out without a car.