Check out a video on NOTA produced by the Democrat & Chronicle! 

The ARTWalk process and project is an award-winning street redesign and public artinitiative anchoring the neighborhood along its spine, UniversityAvenue. Conceived by local residents and adopted after more than a yearof planning in concert with the City, ARTWalk is a permanent urban art trailconnecting the arts centers and public spaces within the neighborhood.ARTWalk prioritizes pedestrians over vehicles and is designed forsafety and social interaction.

Such clustering of arts facilities creates a synergistic magic here. Artists, with studios in the Anderson Alley cooperative and Village Gate Square, drop in with residents and tourists to catch the latest exhibits at the nearby Memorial Art Gallery and the world's leading museum of photography and film, the George Eastman House. At Cobblestone, an alternative private Pre-K through 8 school, students regularly walk down the block to classes at the Creative Workshop, exhibits at the Visual Studies Workshop, or performances at the School of the Arts, the excellent public middle and high school for the performing and visual arts. Poets and their grateful resident audiences visit Writers and Books, the city's literary center, and walk together afterwards to Starry Nites Cafe a few doors down for cappuccino and guitar performances. Musicians and dancers take classes from Kinections Dance & Movement, Bush Mango Drum and Dance, and more. Cultural diversity and understanding is celebrated and sowed at the Baobab Cultural Center; the region's best photographers exhibit and draw crowds of aficionados and neighbors at Image City Photography Gallery at Imagine Square (a former police station now home to a cornucopia of arts and cultural organizations, studios, etc.).
A new eclectic cultural center, the Multi-Use Cultural and Community Center (MuCCC), just opened in a 1888 wooden mission-style church building in the neighborhood.

All told, dozens of artists locate their studios in the converted industrial buildings throughout in the neighborhood. Lettering Artist Linda McFadden, for example, moved her studio from Victor for that "extra push" the area provides. Here, she explains, artists are interconnected with fellow creators and cultural groups - making it easy and natural to keep in touch with the rest of the art community.

In addition to fine arts, the neighborhood boasts a wide range of commercial and graphic arts businesses. Historically a center for the printing industry, today's roster of respected companies includes Monroe Graphics, Riley Printers, Matrix Unlimited and Kinex Corporation, to name just a few Gleason Works, housed in a quarter-mile-long historic building along University Avenue, is the world's largest gear-making machine manufacturer, and provides a solid economic and job base for the community as well as active support for the neighborhood association. Craft Company No.6, located in the renovated Victorian era firehouse, is a favorite gift and homewares store for residents and tourists alike.

As a destination spot, NOTA draws thousands each year for its highly successful events. In summer, the Clothesline Festival, Rochester's oldest and largest arts and crafts fair, features more than 600 artists from 23 counties and several states. From fall to spring, the artists of the Anderson Alley invite the public into their studios on the second Saturday of the month. In September ARTWalk Alive street festival takes over University Avenue for music, dance, drama, and every other art form imaginable--this is an event where the audience is the artist too!

As much as the Neighborhood of the Arts excels as an art Mecca, for its residents it is first and foremost a charming place to live. So much so, that the area's pocket of historic housing witnessed a dramatic increase in housing values during the last decade.

The centerpiece to this residential rebirth is the renovated Towner Building on the corner of Atlantic and University Avenues. This striking Flat Iron building named after the triangular-tip-and square-end shape of early irons, anchors the main commercial artery with quaint restaurants and shops topped by three floors of upscale apartments. Turn-of-the-century Victorian Era homes on nearby residential streets provide a variety of single family housing and apartments. "We take pride in being a racially and economically integrated neighborhood," explains Richard Margolis, NOTA Coordinator.

Along with diversity, NOTA is best defined by its "walkability" and activism. "It is really an ideal city neighborhood," says resident and Little Theater Manager Bill Coppard, who loves strolling to work as well as to restaurants and museums. The century old public market is only a short trek away.