317 Market St

317 Market St

317 Market is a century-old commercial building in Rockford's East Bank district — and for more than twenty years, the work of one artist.

In 1984, Deborah Newton made the vacant building hers: a sky-lit studio, lofts for resident artists, and a gallery that hosted more than eighty exhibitions over twenty-one years. A painter whose canvases hang in collections across the country, she took top honor at the city's Mayor's Arts Awards in 1996 and was honored posthumously with the Rockford Area Arts Council's Lifetime Achievement Award in 2021.

The building still does what she made it for — the 317 Art Collaborative on the ground floor, gallery and working studios, with lofts above.