Highland Square Events & Things To Do

Highland Square is Akron's walkable arts-and-coffee community, a stretch of West Market Street where more than half the homes were built before 1940. The calendar's headline event is the annual PorchRokr Festival every August — a free music and art showcase with more than 150 bands playing from community front porches across one Saturday — and the Highland Theatre (826 W. Market St.) anchors the year-round calendar as a restored 1938 art house and concert venue. The Countryside Farmers' Market at Highland Square runs Thursdays in season at Will Christy Park, and day-to-day life turns on a tight cluster of independent businesses: Mustard Seed Market & Café, Angel Falls Coffee, Mary Coyle Ice Cream, Square Records, and the row of bars and restaurants along West Market. The Portage Path — the Native American canoe portage between the Cuyahoga and Tuscarawas Rivers that served as the western boundary of white and Native lands from 1785 to 1805 — still runs straight through the community.