Midtown-Edmondson is a mixed-use neighborhood in western Baltimore City developed mostly between the 1880s and the 1910s. The neighborhood is mainly composed of residential rowhouses, with a mixed-used business district along Edmondson Avenue, and industrial warehouses and buildings dotted along the CSX railroads that bound its western edge.

Baltimore City defines the neighborhood as bounded by North Bentalou St. to the west and North Monroe St. to the east, with north borders being the CSX train tracks, then West Lafayette Ave, and the south border formed by West Mulberry Street. Residents of Midtown-Edmondson would also include one or two blocks east of N. Monroe St toward N. Fulton St. The neighborhood includes zip codes 21217 and 21223.

Residential development in Midtown Edmondson began as early as 1887 when local small builders constructed rowhouses and cottages with creative variations on the vernacular rowhouse conventions of the period. These homes were initially designed as summer homes for city residents, but with the expansion of streetcar infrastructure down Edmondson Avenue in the 1890s, rowhouse development quickly became marketed to the city's growing middle class population.

The mix of residential and industrial development reflects the uneven character of development in the years following the 1888 annexation of Baltimore County, as neighborhood groups in Midtown-Edmondson fought to secure investment for needed infrastructure and oppose the intrusion of commercial and industrial development, such as the Ward Baking Company in 1925, the Acme building and Interstate 170 (Maryland) highway construction in the 1970s.

During the post-World War II period, the population of Midtown-Edmondson and nearby neighborhoods underwent a rapid transition from European American in the mid-1940s to become predominantly African American by the early-1950s. This transition offered many middle class African American households in Baltimore their first opportunity for buying a home and led to the creation of neighborhood organization that took an active role in local civil rights organizing and activism.

While the physical development of the neighborhood was wholly complete by the beginning of World War II, the decades following 1945 saw significant changes. African Americans began moving west of Fulton Avenue in the mid-1940s and by the early 1950s the once segregated white neighborhood had become largely African American. From the 1960s through the present, the neighborhood experienced many of the same challenges affecting low-income African American neighborhoods across the city – including persistent vacant housing and disinvestment from commercial corridors like Edmondson Avenue. Despite these issues, the residents have remained resilient undertaking organizing efforts to try to address a range of community concerns.

Industrial and commercial development within the Midtown Edmondson area is concentrated along the railroad tracks and along the historic routes for the electric streetcars. In addition, the two major east-west through streets, Lafayette Avenue and Edmondson Avenue, offered more opportunities for continued commercial investment than the streets that terminate at the railroad tracks. With the expansion of the streetcar along Edmondson avenue, scores of rowhouses converted to commercial use early in the 1900s. Examples visible from the 1914 Sanborn maps include a wallpaper store, a paint store, a bakery, a hardware store, a drugstore, and a Chinese laundry. The Arrow Laundry at North Pulaski between Lafayette Avenue and Lanvale Street operated between 1914 and the early 1950s. As another example, the Pressman Brothers Grocery Store operated at 2237 Edmondson Avenue.

One resident in this period, Jerry Leiber, later recalled his own experience growing up above his family's confectionery store at Riggs and McKean Avenues: "We were raised working in the store on the first floor and living in back of the store and on the second floor. We all worked in the store. When I was old enough to list, I started bagging potatoes and sorting out soda bottles by brands to turn them into the companies for cash. The neighborhood was full of Jewish-owned grocery stores. Spivak's was at Monroe and Lanvale Streets, Giller's at Mosher Street and Kirby Lane.