Shotgun and cottage houses circle a five story brick cotton mill, converted into lofts and used as a derelict warehouse in Trespass.
What Cabbagetown looks like
Cabbagetown's streets are narrower than most of Atlanta's, with short blocks and small one and two story houses set close to the sidewalk. is the neighborhood's commercial strip, a run of low storefronts under a mix of flat and pitched roofs.
The faces Carroll Street in five stories of red brick, arched windows repeating floor to floor under a flat roofline. It dates from 1881 and now holds loft apartments. A chain link fence along the sidewalk below it is covered in a long run of street art panels.
The houses around the mill mix plain one story cottages with taller two story ones. Paint colors run blue, green, red and tan. , and have some of the plainest examples, one story under steep gabled roofs with porches across the front. On Kirkwood a stone retaining wall and steps lead up from the sidewalk. A two story house at the Pearl Street corner is taller, with trim along the porch roof and the gable above it. Small yards are enclosed by picket fences or low iron railings.
A paved path crosses Cabbagetown Park through mature trees and flowering redbuds. At the edge of the neighborhood, the runs under the CSX rail yard toward Reynoldstown and Inman Park, its walls covered floor to ceiling in spray paint murals.
Shot in Cabbagetown
For Dumb and Dumber To, the production built a temporary residential street on a long vacant lot at Kirkwood Avenue and Pearl Street in 2013. It stood in for a street in Rhode Island, and the set came down once filming wrapped. The neighborhood's other screen credits center on the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill, a few blocks away.
Trespass, 1992
The Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill
Played an abandoned building, East St. Louis, Illinois
Trespass filmed at the then vacant, derelict Fulton Bag and Cotton Mills over the winter of 1991 and 1992. The production used it as the abandoned building where the story's stolen gold is hidden, a plot set in East St. Louis, Illinois. The mill in the photograph is the same building, since converted into loft apartments. A loft inside it became the Fab Five's production office and shared home base on the Netflix series Queer Eye, and the film What Men Want shot at the Cotton Mill Lofts in 2018.
What Cabbagetown can double for
North Davidson Street in Charlotte, North Carolina
NoDa is Charlotte's own former mill village. It mixes small mill worker cottages with galleries and murals around Highland Park Mill #3, a converted cotton mill on North Davidson Street. Both neighborhoods pair the same kind of small worker housing with one large converted mill building. NoDa's streets run wider and straighter than Cabbagetown's, and its murals cluster around North Davidson Street itself. A wide shot needs care to avoid giving away the different street pattern. Try searching NoDa mill village now.
Olympia Mill in Columbia, South Carolina
Olympia Mill is a four story red brick cotton mill built in 1899. Large arched window openings repeat across the length of its facade, and a village of small workers' houses surrounds it. Like the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill, the building has since been converted into loft apartments, keeping its original windows. Olympia Mill's twin towers and Romanesque brick detailing are more ornate than Fulton Bag's plainer roofline, so a frame that includes the towers shows a different, larger building. Try searching Olympia Mill worker houses now.
Brandon Mill in Greenville, South Carolina
Brandon Mill, now the West Village Lofts, is an early twentieth century brick cotton mill converted into loft apartments much like the Fulton Bag and Cotton Mill. Its surrounding mill houses were sold off individually rather than kept as a set, so the mix of houses around it looks less uniform than Cabbagetown's. In Greenville, the mill sits back from the street grid behind more parking and newer landscaping than Fulton Bag's Carroll Street frontage, so a wide establishing shot needs careful framing to hide the difference. Try searching Brandon Mill lofts Greenville now.
