Bangkok Rowhouse Atlas

Na Phra Lan shophouses
ตึกแถวหน้าพระลาน
The Grand Palace is the postcard. This disciplined, tenant-occupied edge is the city-making architecture. Its restoration kept the people and repaired the whole façade as one civic room.
Walk the opposite pavement at opening time; the repeated bays read best before tour traffic fills the curb.

Tha Tien market blocks
กลุ่มตึกแถวท่าเตียน
Not one building: 490 shop units, a market and a river landing working as a single urban instrument. The smell, wholesale trade and ferry rhythm are part of the heritage—not noise around it.
Enter from Maha Rat, cross the market, then look back from the Wat Arun ferry queue.
Journal of Cultural Geography / Tha Tien study

Tha Chang–Maha Rat frontage
ตึกแถวท่าช้าง–ถนนมหาราช
A working seam between palace wall, university, amulet trade and river pier. Heritage here is measured by how many different Bangkok lives can still share one short frontage.
Take the cross-river boat once. The row is easier to understand from the water than from the pavement.

Sam Phraeng
สามแพร่ง
Three former palace compounds became 119 commercial units and a rare interior square. Bangkok did not copy a colonial port here; it converted royal land into a compact mercantile neighbourhood.
Start at Phraeng Phuthon before breakfast, then cut through Phraeng Nara rather than circling the arterial roads.
Nakhara: Evolving Urban Landscape of Sam Phraeng

Bamrung Mueang–Giant Swing rows
ตึกแถวบำรุงเมือง–เสาชิงช้า
Civic-axis corner and curved masonry rows
The curve does the work. These rows turn the Giant Swing from an object into a place, holding the street wall while temple, city hall and specialist shops face one another.
Look above the signs. The useful evidence is in parapets, bay widths and the corner turn.

Bowonniwet Temple rows
ตึกแถวหน้าวัดบวรนิเวศวิหาร
L-shaped one- and two-storey temple-frontage row
Bangkok's oldest surviving Rattanakosin rowhouse group began as dwellings for Grand Palace officers, then learned to trade without losing its long civic edge. The corner rises, the ordinary bays repeat, and the temple street becomes a room rather than leftover traffic space.
Begin on Phra Sumen Road, turn the corner into Dinso, and watch how the row changes height without breaking its street wall.
Journal of Architecture and Planning: Rattanakosin shophouse transformation

Tanao Road rows
ตึกแถวริมถนนตะนาว
Long two-storey masonry street rows in three survey sections
Tanao is the quiet north–south stitch of the old city. Its plain early rows do not compete with monuments; they connect Bowonniwet, Khok Wua, Sam Phraeng and the Giant Swing into one walkable sequence of trade, dwelling and worship.
Walk south from the Bowonniwet corner and keep to one pavement; the changing shop signs reveal how much of the repeated upper façade survives.

Tani Road rows
ตึกแถวถนนตานีและอาคารวรพจน์
Tani is easy to dismiss as Khao San's service edge. The official survey asks us to read it differently: as a surviving rowhouse street anchored by Woraphot Building, where small rooms, food and travel have shared a compact frontage for generations.
Arrive before the evening crowd and compare the upper floors at both ends; this is a working street, not an isolated façade.

Ban Phan Thom rows
ตึกแถวบ้านพานถม–ถนนพระสุเมรุ
Alley-and-arterial rows at a craft-community edge
The official record catches the seam between a neighbourhood named for beaten-metal craft and the larger Phra Sumen road. Heritage here is not a decorative strip: it is the small lane, shop depth and domestic life that let a specialised community meet the city.
Turn off Phra Sumen into the smaller lanes; the cultural evidence sits in the change of scale, not in a single landmark.

Phra Athit Khao Hong row
ตึกแถวเก้าห้อง ถนนพระอาทิตย์
Only nine bays, but a complete urban sentence: fort, river road, shade trees, homes above trade. Small ensembles like this are where citywide databases usually fail.
Pair it with the fort at dusk, then use the river path—not Khao San—as your exit.
Journal of the Siam Society: Old Bangkok shophouses

Luenrit community
ชุมชนเลื่อนฤทธิ์
Tenants stopped demolition, organised, financed and reopened the restored block in 2022. This is Bangkok's strongest answer to the idea that conservation must arrive from outside the community.
Read the whole block before entering a café; the collective project matters more than any single tenancy.
ICCROM Cultural Heritage for Inclusive Growth

Charoen Chai paper-goods quarter
ชุมชนเจริญไชย
A living supply chain for Chinese ceremonies: paper offerings, calendars, printing, family memory. Its heritage is a network of knowledge held behind ordinary shutters—not a façade treatment.
Ask before photographing interiors. Visit ahead of major Chinese festivals when the trade becomes legible.

Song Wat trade street
ถนนทรงวาด
The new cafés are a thin layer. The street's real intelligence is its river-to-warehouse grain: narrow fronts, deep plots, loading alleys and families living over trade.
Walk west to east in the morning. Notice where goods—not visitors—still set the rhythm.
Fine Arts Department register + Bangkok cultural reporting

Wanit 1–Sampheng fabric
ตึกแถววานิช 1–สำเพ็ง
This is density before towers: tiny frontages, deep stock rooms, handcarts and upper-floor households. It works because the block is porous, not because the buildings are individually grand.
Go before 10am and turn into the narrowest passage that is clearly public; the main street hides the system.

Talad Noi back lanes
ตรอกตลาดน้อย
Half masonry, half timber; shrines, repair shops, reused warehouses and homes sharing lanes too narrow for a curated masterplan. The district is valuable because productive mess survives beside new culture.
Community tip: go before 9am or after 4pm; midday heat erases the slow details.
Bangkok News / Around Online neighbourhood guide

Plaeng Nam micro-street
ถนนแปลงนาม
Barely one hundred metres, yet it joins Charoen Krung and Yaowarat as a complete cultural cross-section. Small streets often carry more city memory per metre than monumental avenues.
Treat it as a connector, not a destination: enter from the temple end and leave into the night market.
Bangkok News / Around Online neighbourhood guide

Nang Loeng market quarter
ย่านตลาดนางเลิ้ง
Market shophouses and timber community lanes
Food is the entry point, not the whole story. Behind the market are performance histories, artists' houses, a Vietnamese temple and rows where domestic and commercial life never fully separated.
Arrive for breakfast, then stay after the food crowd leaves and walk the lanes behind the market hall.
Bangkok News / Around Online neighbourhood guide

Hua Takhe old canal market
ตลาดเก่าหัวตะเข้
Bangkok's rowhouse story does not end at the old city wall. Here the frontage faces water: timber rooms, workshops and groceries form a long inhabited section through the canal landscape.
Visit on a weekday if you want the architecture; weekends tell the visitor-economy story instead.

Talat Phlu railway-market rows
ตึกแถวย่านตลาดพลู
A useful correction to palace-centred heritage: rail, canal, food trade and ordinary rowhouses made a second old Bangkok on the Thonburi side. The network matters more than a single trophy building.
Trace one loop from railway to market to canal. Each infrastructure leaves a different rowhouse edge.

Tha Phrachan riverfront rows
ตึกแถวท่าพระจันทร์
Between the palace-university wall and the river, books, amulets, food and ferry traffic compress into one inhabited edge. Conservation here has already shown its political question: repair the façade, but who gets to remain behind it?
Walk from the pier toward Thammasat at opening time; read the upper floors before the pavement becomes a market.
Journal of the Siam Society: CPB heritage inventory

Asdang–Ban Mo rowhouse block
กลุ่มตึกแถวอัษฎางค์–พระพิทักษ์–บ้านหม้อ
Roadside and interior rows organised by canal, street and backlane
A published spatial survey counted 108 roadside units: 45 on Ban Mo, 16 on Phra Phitak and 47 on Asdang, with later rows inside the block. The canalside superblock shows Bangkok making a commercial quarter through incremental streets and backlanes—not a colonial masterplan.
Use Khlong Khu Mueang Doem as your compass, then loop Ban Mo, Phra Phitak and Asdang to read the three different street edges.
Journal of Architecture and Planning: Rattanakosin shophouse transformation

Srasong–Longtha rows
ตึกแถวตรอกสระสรง–ลงท่า
Privy Purse rental rows aligned with Khlong Lod and backlanes
Ninety-eight rental shophouses were laid out in 1910 between Wat Suthat and the Khlong Lod edge near Wat Ratchabophit. Parallel rows and service lanes make an urban machine from rent, water access and temple traffic—dense, practical and unmistakably Bangkok.
Enter from the Wat Suthat side and leave toward Khlong Lod; the backlanes explain the block better than a single façade photograph.
Journal of Architecture and Planning: Rattanakosin shophouse transformation

Phraya Si–Si Kak rows
ตึกแถวถนนพระยาศรี–สี่กั๊กพระยาศรี
Intersection rows linking Charoen Krung, Fueang Nakhon and Ban Mo
At one of old Bangkok's great four-way junctions, the rows reveal how the first modern roads met an older Mon community and specialist trade. The result is not imported colonial order but a Bangkok hinge—royal city, port street and mercantile lane turning around one another.
Stand at Si Kak Phraya Si and rotate slowly: each street carries a different period and trade, but the rowhouse scale holds the junction together.
Journal of the Siam Society: CPB heritage inventory

Memorial Bridge bridgehead rows
ตึกแถวเชิงสะพานพระพุทธยอดฟ้า–จักรเพชร
Bridgehead and market-front rows on the Phra Nakhon bank
The bridge is usually read as infrastructure and Pak Khlong Talat as spectacle. The surveyed rows between them are the missing urban tissue: small commercial bays absorbing flowers, ferries, road traffic and the daily transfer between Thonburi and the old capital.
Walk from Pak Khlong Talat toward the bridge and look inland before crossing; the edge works as an exchange, not a monument forecourt.

Bang Rak multicultural rows
ตึกแถวพหุวัฒนธรรมบางรัก
Chinese, South Asian, Western and Thai shophouse corridor
Bang Rak is the argument in miniature: Chinese shop signs, South Asian tailoring, western-company streets and Thai alleys occupy the same commercial spine. The heritage is not one approved style; it is difference that learned to share an address.
Walk Charoen Krung from Si Phraya toward Silom and count languages, upstairs access and shop-depth changes—not cafés.
Nakhara: Ordinary Urban Heritage in Bang Rak

Patpong modern shophouse rows
ตึกแถวสมัยใหม่พัฒน์พงศ์
Heritage does not stop at 1932. Patpong's rows record Bangkok becoming a global service economy: daytime shutters, night businesses and separate stairs that turned upper floors into independent commercial territory.
Visit once by day and once after dark; the same row operates as two different pieces of city.
Nakhara: Ordinary Urban Heritage in Bang Rak

Nong Chok old market
ตลาดเก่าหนองจอก
Timber shophouse rows along Khlong Saen Saep
At the meeting of canals twelve, thirteen and Saen Saep, Chinese timber shops served a largely Muslim agricultural landscape. This is Bangkok too: not fringe, but the eastern half of the capital explaining how water, trade and coexistence built one another.
Stand on the newer market side and look across the canal; the old commercial frontage makes sense from its former transport route.
Silpakorn University: Nong Chok timber-row study

Charoen Krung 103 canal-market approach
ตึกแถวทางเข้าชุมชนเจริญกรุง 103
Roadside rowhouses leading to a Muslim canal market
The green-and-cream row is a threshold, not the destination. Pass through it and the arterial city gives way to a small weekend halal market, Buddhist–Muslim neighbourliness and a canal landscape hidden behind Charoen Krung.
The canal market opens only on the first Saturday and Sunday of each month; the rowhouse approach is legible every day.

Dilok Chan lane
ตรอกดิลกจันทร์–ชุมชนสมเด็จย่า
River-trade lane enclosed by ordinary rowhouses
A tiny lane holds the afterimage of a larger port economy—salt sheds, fish-sauce works, export trade and the Guan Yu shrine. The important space is not a monument but the narrow public room made by rowhouses around collective memory.
Enter from Princess Mother Memorial Park and keep walking toward the Guan Yu shrine; the lane reveals its river logic gradually.