The Belt turns 10

The Belt opened ten years ago this month. Library Street Collective and Bedrock unveiled the downtown alley on November 13, 2014, with food trucks, live music, and a mural still going up on the wall. Chicago artist Jordan Nickel, who works as POSE, was painting in the alley alongside students from the Detroit Academy of Arts and Sciences, per Crain's Detroit Business, which covered the opening.

That mural anchored the first run of Public Matter, the rotating outdoor exhibition Library Street Collective curates in the alley. The Belt runs between Broadway and Library Street, linking Gratiot to Grand River, in what was once Detroit's downtown garment district. The name comes from the alley's place in that old garment trade.

Library Street Collective founders Anthony and JJ Curis had opened their gallery in 2012, two years before they pitched Bedrock on the alley and made it their first public-art project. About two dozen commissioned murals went up in the first run. "This formerly desolate alley has transformed into one of the most dynamic pedestrian-friendly public spaces in the country," Anthony Curis said in the gallery's own description of the project.

The roster of artists who have painted The Belt over the decade reads like a survey of contemporary public art. Nina Chanel Abney. Shepard Fairey. FAILE. Cleon Peterson. Jason REVOK. Conrad Egyir, Ellen Rutt, Sam Friedman, Tom Fruin, Jammie Holmes, Patrick Martinez, and Rosson Crow, among others, per Library Street Collective's project page.

The bars and restaurants arrived in waves. The cobblestone got polished, stamped concrete went down, lighting was added, and picnic tables filled the alley in summer.

In 2021, Library Street Collective opened a flagship gallery on the south end of the alley, on the ground floor of the historic L.B. King and Company Building at 1274 Library Street, a 1911 structure first built for a china wholesaler. The New York design firm Snarkitecture sculpted a portal directly into the building's original brick facade, an opening that works as both a window into the gallery and an installation within the alley itself. "The architectural portal, sculpted into the original brick facade of the building, provides not only a window into the gallery but will become another important installation within the Belt," Curis told The Art Newspaper.

The Curises have spent the years since extending the playbook outward, into other Detroit neighborhoods. The Belt is where it started. Bedrock owns the surrounding real estate, and The Belt itself is, technically, still an alley.