Creative Arts Workshop

80 Audubon Street, otherwise known as the Creative Arts Workshop, or CAW, is located on Audubon Street within the New Haven Audubon Arts District. The building serves a purpose similar to its neighboring structures. It houses a nonprofit art organization, with ties to the New Haven Arts Council, located next door at 70 Audubon Street. Visible from the street, the building represents a combination of postmodern and brutalist styles. Its gray concrete contrasts with the storefront glazing that allows passersby to peak into a front-room and a mezzanine. The 45 degree angle of the façade demonstrates the playfulness of postmodernism, while the rest of the building’s concrete elements convey brutalism.

The building is located on a site that once belonged to thriving manufacturing district within the city of New Haven. In the late 1800s, the site included parts of two manufacturing buildings—the Andrew B. Hendryx birdcage manufacturing company and the A.A. Ball and Co. iron railing manufacturing company. The latter became the Kidder Motor Vehicle Company sometime between 1886 and 1901.

Currently, the commercial, art-oriented and residential buildings of the district combine to form a pleasant and bustling street, as devised by an urban renewal plan of the 50s and 60s. This plan began to come to life in 1968, with the arrival of the Neighborhood Music School at 100 Audubon Street, quickly followed by the Creative Arts Workshop, whose permanent home was built in 1972. The site is located between Audubon Street and the New Haven canal, within a streetscape that includes buildings of multiple styles and purposes.