Third Friday of every month, the loading dock elevators at 78th Street Studios start filling up around 5:30 p.m. and don’t slow down until well past nine. The building — a former industrial complex off Detroit Avenue in the Detroit Shoreway neighborhood — holds somewhere north of sixty working studios, and on those evenings, most of them open their doors.
The crowd is genuinely mixed. Retired couples from Lakewood show up alongside art school students from CIA and CWRU. Families push strollers past abstract oil paintings. Collectors with checkbooks browse next to people who just wandered in from a nearby bar and aren’t entirely sure what they’re looking at. That mix is part of what makes Third Fridays at 78th Street Studios work — nobody feels out of place, and nobody’s pretending.
The building itself is worth a slow walk regardless of what’s on the walls. The hallways are wide and slightly industrial, with exposed ceilings and the faint smell of linseed oil and clay. Ceramic studios sit beside photography darkrooms beside metalwork shops beside textile artists. The range is wide enough that even a visitor with no particular interest in visual art tends to find something that stops them mid-stride.
A few artists to look for: John Hubbard’s oil paintings have a loose, atmospheric quality that photographs badly but holds attention in person. The ceramic work coming out of the lower-level studios tends toward functional ware with some serious craft behind it. And the photography studios — several of them — show prints that could hold their own in any serious gallery.
There’s usually a food truck or two parked outside, and a cash bar operates somewhere in the building on event nights. It’s not a polished gallery experience with white gloves and hushed tones. Artists are standing in their own studios, talking about the work, answering questions, occasionally selling something. That directness is the point.
Third Fridays run most months, typically 5 to 9 p.m., with the schedule posted on the studio’s website. Admission is free. Parking is relatively easy on the surrounding streets, which is not nothing for an event that draws a few hundred people on a good night.
On non-event days, the building is still accessible during regular business hours, and many studios welcome visitors even without the structured open-house format. It’s quieter, obviously, but sometimes more useful — artists actually have time to talk, and the work gets undivided attention.
Detroit Shoreway has changed considerably over the past decade, and 78th Street Studios is part of that story. The neighborhood still has its rough patches, but the corridor along Detroit Avenue between 65th and 85th has accumulated enough galleries, restaurants, and creative businesses that a visit to the studios can anchor a longer afternoon. The Gordon Square Arts District is a short walk east. Edgewater is a short drive north.
For a city that sometimes undersells its own cultural infrastructure, 78th Street Studios represents something real: working artists, affordable studio space, and a recurring public event that doesn’t cost anything to attend. The work on the walls changes constantly. So does the crowd. That alone is enough reason to go back.
