Fodor's Expert Review Brookside Dining and Shopping District

Historic Brookside is a laid-back, easy-to-navigate collection of unique restaurants, art studios and galleries, boutiques, and entertainment and nightlife venues, woven among specialty services, churches, and residences. Once a settlement area for the Creek Nation displaced from Alabama in 1834, it became home to Brookside Drug a century later. By the 1940s new residential and commercial development sprouted—elegant homes, churches, businesses, and wholesome entertainment—and these characteristics have endured. Some of the Streamline-style art-deco buildings survive, including the City Veterinary Hospital and KJRH-TV (formerly the Brookside Broadcast Center). Others have been retrofitted for new uses: the former Brook Theater is now The Brook restaurant and bar; Dunwell Cleaners, a family business for four generations, is now a popular sushi restaurant; and Holmes Elemenary School is now the Brookside Center.