Phoebus Historic District

An independent town until Hampton absorbed it in 1952, and still recognisably its own place — a compact grid of late 19th-century commercial buildings that grew up outside the gates of Fort Monroe to serve soldiers, sailors and the steamboat trade.

Mellen Street is the spine: two blocks of brick storefronts now holding a theatre, a coffee roaster, restaurants, antique shops and galleries, run by owners who mostly live nearby. It has been steadily reviving over the last decade without being polished into something generic, and it is lit up nicely after dark. The street ends at the Phoebus Waterfront Park on Mill Creek.

A good place to eat if you are visiting Fort Monroe, which is five minutes away across the creek — and a considerably more interesting one than the chain corridor inland.