Depot Lane, the service alley running behind the Water Street storefronts, has six new murals and considerably more foot traffic than an alley with dumpsters in it has any right to have.
The works went up over eleven days in late June, painted by four artists from the region and two from Millbrook, and paid for with $28,000 from the downtown district assessment plus donated wall space from six building owners.
The cat
The one everyone photographs is on the back of Delacroix Pharmacy: a grey tabby, roughly fourteen feet tall, painted by Ashford artist Nen Vuong. It is based on a cat named Boots who belonged to the pharmacy’s previous owner and who died in 2019.
“I had three sketches and the owner looked at all three and said, that one is the wrong cat,” Vuong said. “So we did the right cat.”
An alley is a place people move through as fast as they can. The whole idea was to make people slow down in it. It worked faster than I expected.
Sasha Bell, who organized the project for the downtown district
The other five
- A 60-foot river map from the reservoir to the mill, by Millbrook artist Ruth Kelleher
- An abstract in the pharmacy’s original 1950s sign colors, by Toby Alvarez
- Portraits of four longtime Water Street shopkeepers, by Nen Vuong
- A pollinator garden that continues onto the pavement, by students from Millbrook High’s art program
- A trompe-l’oeil doorway on the blank wall behind the bank, by Ines Marchetti
What happens to them
Each owner signed a five-year maintenance agreement, and the district holds a small fund for touch-ups and anti-graffiti coating. Bell says the plan is to add two walls a year until the alley runs out, which by her count is 2031.
A printed walking map is at the library and the visitor kiosk on Water Street.