Art on the Avenue Returns October 3 to a Different Mount Vernon Avenue
October 1, 2026
October 1, 2026
A year ago, the storefront at 1504B Mount Vernon Avenue had brown paper taped over its windows and a sign that hadn't been replaced since Benny DiForza's Pizza closed the previous October. Anyone walking past on their way to last year's Art on the Avenue would have seen a dark space between two open businesses, the kind of gap a neighborhood stops noticing after a few months.
That gap is gone now. In June, Matthew Sloan and Eric Brannon opened Little Birdie in that same address, a chef-driven concept built around chicken, seafood and Southern-inspired flavors, directly across the street from their first restaurant, Matt & Tony's All Day Kitchen + Bar at 1501 Mount Vernon Avenue. When Art on the Avenue closes the street again on Saturday, October 3, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., festivalgoers will walk past that corner for the first time as something other than papered-over glass.
The festival itself hasn't changed. What changed is the avenue it happens on.
This year marks the 31st annual Art on the Avenue, running along Mount Vernon Avenue between Hume and Bellefonte avenues. No tickets are required. The festival draws more than 350 local and regional artists, live music across multiple stages, international food, children's activities and the pie-baking contest that has become one of its signature traditions.
Getting there without a car is built into the day. A free trolley runs from both the Potomac Yard and Braddock Road Metro stations, and a free bike valet is available at the Children's House Montessori School parking lot near the intersection of Mount Vernon Avenue. Both options exist because the festival closes a working commercial corridor to traffic for eight hours, and a stretch of Del Ray that residents normally drive or bike through becomes a stretch they walk.
That's the part worth paying attention to this year. Walking is exactly what turns up the difference between last October's Avenue and this one.
Little Birdie is the most visible change, but it isn't the only address that turned over since the last festival closed these blocks.
At 2003 Mount Vernon Avenue, the space that spent years as the neighborhood dessert shop Dolce & Bean is becoming a taproom for Crooked Run Fermentation, the Loudoun County brewery that opened its first Alexandria location this year. Co-founder Jake Endres has described the buildout as smaller and more design-focused than the brewery's other locations, closer in size to its original Leesburg taproom than to its larger DC space at Union Market.
Two doors up, at 2018 Mount Vernon Avenue, the longtime Thai Peppers space has had its signage stripped and its windows covered in brown paper since summer. D. Jason Portlance, who already owns Del Ray Farmhouse Market + Garden and Del Ray Hardware a few blocks away, is developing a new bar called Rosie's Tavern there, with a proposed opening in November.
And at 2218 Mount Vernon Avenue, the sign changed even if the building didn't. Del Ray Pizzeria became Del Ray Public House this spring, a rebrand the owners describe as a neighborhood restaurant with a roadhouse soul, built on a building that traces its story back to 1908. The menu shifted with the name, including a Roswell burger with Hatch green chile sauce and a Four Corners Feast for Two, while the room kept its Monday trivia and Friday karaoke nights running through the transition.
Four storefronts, four different states of completion, all sitting on the same street the festival has claimed every October for three decades.
Not every one of those addresses will be serving anything on October 3, and that distinction matters more than a simple list of what's new.
Little Birdie has been open since June and is running its full lunch, dinner, weekend brunch and cocktail service, so it's a real option for festival-day food rather than a preview. Del Ray Public House has been operating under its new name and menu since spring and will be past any transition hiccups by the time the tents go up.
Crooked Run's taproom is a different story. As of its most recent public update, the buildout was still underway with an opening described only as "later this year." Residents walking past 2003 Mount Vernon Avenue on festival day may find construction still finishing rather than a pour happening, and that's worth knowing before building a route around it.
Rosie's Tavern is the clearest case. With a proposed opening in November, the papered windows at 2018 Mount Vernon Avenue will almost certainly still be papered on October 3. It's a storefront in transition, not a stop.
The most unusual turnover on the Avenue this year involves two record stores that announced their arrival on the same day.
Neighborhood Restaurant Group, the hospitality group known locally for the Birch & Barley and Evening Star Café projects, said it would open a record store at 2016 Mount Vernon Avenue, with Evening Star chef Nathan Anda and NRG beverage director Greg Engert joining founder Michael Babin on the project. On the same afternoon, Crooked Beat Records announced it would reopen at 2101B Mount Vernon Avenue, a location just 128 feet from the NRG shop.
Two record stores that close together didn't happen by coordination. It happened because Mount Vernon Avenue had more openings land in a single season than it typically absorbs in several, and two of them happened to land in the same category within the same week. For anyone building a festival-day walk, that means a stretch of the Avenue now has a browsing stop it didn't have last year, twice.
Art on the Avenue has always framed itself as a showcase for people who live here, and this year's roster leans into that. Among the artists making their 2026 debut is Sheila Bailey, who works under the name A Basket Case, making rope baskets on a sewing machine using repurposed fabric and creating custom memory baskets from sentimental pieces clients bring her.
The festival's artist list this year also overlaps with Mayor Alyia Gaskins' Art in Every Space initiative, which places original work by Alexandria-based artists in non-traditional locations around the city, including offices, gyms and breweries. Several artists showing at the festival on October 3 already have pieces installed in local businesses through that program, which means the same names a festivalgoer sees on Mount Vernon Avenue may already be familiar from a stop somewhere else in the city.
The pie-baking contest remains part of the day, as it has for years, and the event continues to run without an admission charge, supported by volunteers and the local business community rather than a ticketed structure. Thirty-one years in, that hasn't changed. What's changed is how much of the street around it has.
None of this rewrites Art on the Avenue. The festival is still free, still runs Hume to Bellefonte, still fills the day with the same mix of art, music, food and the pie contest that regulars come back for every October. What's different is the texture of the walk between tents, and that difference is concentrated in just a few addresses: a restaurant that used to be a papered-over pizza shop, a taproom still finishing its buildout, a tavern still weeks from opening, a pizzeria that became a roadhouse, and two record stores that opened 128 feet apart on the same Tuesday.
For a neighborhood that treats one Saturday in October as its biggest annual gathering, that's a meaningful amount of turnover to happen underneath it in a single year.
If Del Ray's changing storefronts have you thinking about what's happening to property values along Mount Vernon Avenue, or you're weighing a move to this stretch of Alexandria, Riggs & Co knows this neighborhood block by block and is ready to talk through what it means for you.
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