A Peek Inside Jim Henson's Creature Shop, Where 'Sesame Street' Characters and Other Whimsical Puppets Are Designed

A former auto factory in Queens has become an unlikely pilgrimage site for puppet lovers, as Jim Henson's Creature Shop now welcomes visitors most weekends to watch the craft behind some of television and film's most beloved characters take shape. The open-door sessions let fans step past the workbenches where figures from Sesame Street and other productions are conceived, built and brought to life, offering a rare look at a process usually hidden from public view.

The workshop occupies part of the old Standard Motors complex, an industrial structure that stretches across roughly two city blocks. Its soaring ceilings and oversized freight elevators, originally installed to move automobiles and machinery, now double as practical necessities for a very different kind of cargo: puppets so large that even the shop's biggest bird creations can be wheeled through without trouble.

During a recent visitor session, actress Jennifer Barnhart, who has spent years performing on Sesame Street, walked a cluster of onlookers through the mechanics of puppeteering, showing off three distinct puppet styles and how each demands a different technique to animate convincingly.

Barnhart pulled a young visitor into the demonstration, coaching them through the physicality required to make a puppet's movements read as natural. She guided the child toward broader, more theatrical gestures, encouraging them to extend an arm outward before bringing it back toward the puppet's body, and praised the result once the motion matched her own.

The session underscored a point that goes beyond simple technique: Henson's puppets were built around a philosophy that broke sharply from centuries of puppetry tradition. According to Ryan Lintelman, who curates the entertainment collection at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, Henson's creations carried an irreverent, offbeat sensibility drawn from the counterculture era rather than the formal lineage of marionettes and rigid wooden figures typically studied by classically trained puppeteers.

Lintelman noted that this departure was intentional and medium-specific: rather than descending from stage traditions, Henson's characters were engineered from the outset for the camera, built to convey personality and emotion within the tight framing of a television screen. That design philosophy helps explain why characters born in the shop's workshops, from Muppets to other creature creations, have retained such an expressive, immediate quality decades after their debuts.

The public tours also serve a broader institutional purpose, connecting a working commercial studio with the kind of preservation and interpretation typically associated with museums. The Smithsonian's own interest in cataloguing Henson's creative legacy, reflected in its entertainment collection, points to a growing recognition that puppetry of this kind deserves serious historical documentation, not just nostalgic appreciation.

For now, access to the Creature Shop remains limited to scheduled weekend visits rather than a standing exhibit, meaning the experience stays intimate and hands-on rather than mass-market. That arrangement leaves open questions about how the studio might balance future public interest with the demands of an active production facility, but it also ensures that, for the moment, curious visitors can still watch puppet artistry unfold at close range rather than through glass.

Source: Smithsonian Magazine