Contemporary Arts Center Industrial Hall

Why is it significant?

Stand before the bold, adaptive reuse facade of the Contemporary Arts Center, or CAC, at the corner of Camp and Saint Joseph Streets.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Stand before the bold, adaptive reuse facade of the Contemporary Arts Center, or CAC, at the corner of Camp and Saint Joseph Streets. Housed in a massive four-story brick warehouse constructed in 1905 for the Finlay-Dicks wholesale pharmaceutical company, this thirty-thousand-square-foot facility stands as the pioneering institutional anchor that catalyzed the transformation of the entire New Orleans Warehouse District in the late 1970s.

Look up into the soaring central atrium: in 1990, visionary architect Jerry Bilbe and modern preservationists hollowed out the center of the industrial warehouse, creating a dramatic four-story skylit atrium crossed by industrial steel catwalks and exposed timber beams.

Founded in 1976 by a passionate collective of local visual artists, actors, and dancers who lacked exhibition space, the CAC operated on a shoestring budget, hosting groundbreaking experimental art, underground punk rock concerts, performance art happenings, and avant-garde theater productions. Today, the CAC is an internationally recognized multi-disciplinary arts center presenting cutting-edge visual exhibitions by regional and global artists, alongside two state-of-the-art theater spaces for modern dance, chamber jazz, and theatrical premieres. The warehouse retains its authentic industrial DNA: colossal heart-pine load-bearing timber columns, rough-hewn brick masonry, heavy brass cargo hoist gears, and oversized multipane factory windows that flood the exhibition galleries with abundant Louisiana daylight. Visiting artists frequently construct site-specific installations that interact directly with the towering brick walls and wooden ceiling rafters, creating an immersive dialogue between historic labor and modern avant-garde culture.

Walking through the spacious, light-filled galleries surrounded by provocative contemporary installations, you feel the daring creative energy that rescued this entire neighborhood from urban decay. The CAC proved that artists could reimagine abandoned industrial relics into cultural cornerstones.

Walk west along Camp Street toward the Romanesque arches of the Ogden Museum of Southern Art.