Northwest Historic District, Historic district in Florida, United States

The Northwest Historic District is a roughly 70-acre district in West Palm Beach, Florida, bounded by Tamarind Avenue, 11th Street, Rosemary Avenue and 3rd Street. It holds 316 historic buildings, mostly churches and houses in Bungalow Craftsman, Bahamian Vernacular, Shotgun and American Foursquare styles. Some churches were designed by the local firm Harvey and Clarke.

African Americans began settling the area in 1894, the year West Palm Beach was incorporated, after being forced out of the Styx section of Palm Beach; many had come from northern Florida, Georgia and the Bahamas for railway work. A 1929 Jim Crow ordinance fixed the segregated neighbourhood's boundaries. The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places on January 22, 1992, and about a year later the city listed it on its own historic registry.

The neighbourhood was the segregated black community of West Palm Beach for decades, and its churches and houses carry that identity. The Sunset Lounge, called the "Cotton Club of the South", hosted Louis Armstrong, Count Basie, James Brown, Sam Cooke and Ella Fitzgerald. The Mickens House, built in 1917, took in guests such as Ralph Bunche, Mary McLeod Bethune and A. Philip Randolph.

The district lies northwest of downtown West Palm Beach, bounded by Tamarind Avenue, 11th Street, Rosemary Avenue and 3rd Street, covering roughly 70 acres. The city's own boundaries differ, sometimes reaching Fifteenth Street and Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard. Tamarind Avenue and 7th Street are being restructured, so check current conditions before walking those blocks.

The shotgun house, a one-storey rectangular frame building with three or four rooms opening off a hallway that runs its full length, takes its name from that floor plan: a shot fired through the front door could pass straight out the back. Several survive in the district.