GREENSBORO — Wanted: neighborhood with a variety of residential architectural styles. Narrow streets and granite curbing. Mature vegetation. Walking distance to downtown. An extensive park at its center. And a diversity of residents.
If it sounds like a movie set instead of reality, Westerwood might not be that far from the truth.
A walk down one of its sidewalks on a fall Saturday can feel a lot like that: the trees turning shades of gold, the sound of children playing carried on the breeze and neighbors out and about.
But this neighborhood is more than just very livable — it seems to be the perfect habitat, if you will, for Greensboro’s artistic community.
In a city known for its gorgeous neighborhoods, Westerwood is a hidden jewel. And just as it’s been here “all along,” it’s helping Greensboro become known for something else that often remains hidden in plain sight — its thriving artistic community.
The neighborhood
Westerwood is centrally located between downtown Greensboro, UNCG and Friendly Shopping Center.
Benjamin Briggs, executive director of Preservation Greensboro, says the reason it has remained an intact neighborhood is in part due to its “tucked in nature” with no frontage on Benjamin Parkway, a park as another boundary and the fact that traditionally, it has not been an area with connectivity.
When it was built in the early 20th century, the neighborhood was one of Greensboro’s first planned communities. A 2001 study by the City of Greensboro’s Department of Housing and Community
Development concluded that “Westerwood may be one of the better examples of an early, planned community for middle-income groups in North Carolina.”
And that “as one of Greensboro’s earliest neighborhoods, Westerwood is a treasure. ... Because of its traditional design, shady streets, proximity to thoroughfares, public transportation, parks, the downtown, colleges, schools, churches, and neighborhood shopping centers, Westerwood may well be the most 'livable’ neighborhood in the city.”
When artist Maryanna Williams first moved to the city with her family almost 19 years ago, she said that it soon became clear that many musicians, artists and university employees lived in Westerwood.
And she made up her mind that Westerwood was where she wanted her family to live.
She really made up her mind.
Ignore the fact that at the time she started looking for a house in the neighborhood, hardly anyone was moving, and if they were, she recalls that it was more of a “word-of-mouth thing” when it came to selling. She was new in town, too. None of that mattered to Williams.
“I had a young baby at the time, and I put her in a carriage and went door-to-door, introducing myself and letting people know I was interested in buying a house should one come available,” she says.
Her perseverance finally paid off when two years later, she was working on a committee with a neighborhood resident who tipped her off that a house was for sale.
“Living here [Westerwood] turned out to be more than I imagined,” she says. “Early on, my neighbors from the band Polecat Creek would practice on their front porch, which was great. Then there are impromptu gatherings, and my husband can walk to work.”
For her work, she only has to walk to her first-floor studio.
As an artist who spent the early part of her career in drawing and pastels, she has of late been focusing on linocuts, which are similar to woodcuts but with a more streamlined process.
“I work in my first-floor studio. There is good light there, and I really like to have a studio in my home. I don’t have to waste time going back and forth.”
The Art and Sole walking tour
Last year, a group of Westerwood artists got together and realized that it was not just Williams who has a studio in her home. In fact, most of them did, and in such a walkable community, the idea for the first annual Westerwood Art and Sole Walking Tour was hatched.
Last year, 19 artists participated, and this year, 22 artists, from potters to painters to photographers, will open their homes to the public Oct. 2, rain or shine.
Musicians will move from Lake Daniel Park to their own front yards, creating impromptu mini concerts along the tour route.
Michael Gleason, a woodworker who has lived in the neighborhood for approximately five years, said that more than 300 people visited his studio during last year’s tour.
For Gleason and his family, Westerwood is a perfect fit. They found their house through an ad on Craigslist, and when he visited the shop in the back, he told his wife he did not even need to see the rest of the house. He is a full-time craftsman whose work is almost always custom projects, and at last year’s walk, he decided to set up his tools and equipment in his driveway to give his studio guests some room to see him at work. He creates everything from kitchen cabinetry to stand alone furniture to a collapsible stage for a puppet troupe, and he gets most of his clients through word of mouth.
Last year’s event helped spread the word, he says. But he’s also happy to get the word out about his neighborhood.
“We love it,” he says. “All these people said last year at the walking tour, 'We didn’t know this place existed.’”
Other artists featured on the tour include Bill Moore, a photographer and aficionado of the classic Polaroid; visual artist Mike Northuis; David Thomas of Artery Gallery; and potter Ann Lynch of Buffalo Creek Pottery.
Not all of the artists in Westerwood are fortunate enough to be able to create full-time, but it seems that the neighborhood is the perfect environment for creative people. It is for people who do not wish to be shut away in their houses, in the cul-de-sac at the end of the street. They want to interact, which for an artist, is obvious. Art is interaction with the world.
Contact Stephanie Burt at charlotteghost@gmail.com
