A neighbourhood made by art

From working buildings to working studios

The association’s surviving account describes a commercial waterfront district whose industrial and warehouse buildings increasingly accommodated artists’ lofts in the early 1970s. It connects the following decades with the arrival of galleries, architects, design businesses and performance groups. This is the association’s account of neighbourhood change, rather than a complete census of buildings or artists.

Two organisations, two timelines

The Old City Arts Association described on this domain said it was formed in 1991. A separate Old City Arts organisation documented by the Old City Arts History Project operated between 1975 and 1980. Similar names should not collapse these organisations into a single uninterrupted institution. The earlier project’s first-person accounts provide a different perspective on the neighbourhood’s creative life.

An open-door idea

First Friday connected exhibitions with an evening walk. Old City District dates the event’s beginning to 1992. The domain’s 2003 guide described gallery receptions alongside design, theatre and dining. The useful idea is a compact cultural circuit: seeing several kinds of work on foot, rather than treating each address as an isolated destination.

Read the street as well as the gallery

On a visit, notice how a display meets the pavement: a window, a doorway, a shopfront or a sign. Compare two spaces without assuming they have the same history. Then look at the work inside. This small exercise connects urban form with the experience of art without requiring access to private buildings.

Continue with primary accounts

Read the Old City Arts History Project for the 1975–1980 organisation. Use the current district directory for addresses and programmes. Our gallery and design notebooks retain dated descriptions from the domain’s 2000s directory; a place’s inclusion there does not establish that it operates at that address today.