Hudson’s Park Theater: A 1921 Movie House Is Now A Vibrant Performance Space
A casual haven for music performance in uptown Hudson, the Park Theater at 723 Warren Street has been adding to the city’s culture for the past few years. With a major increase in activity starting in the summer of 2023, the theater now presents performances every week and big names rolling through on the regular.
“I wanted to make a space that’s welcoming to the entire community,” says owner Shanan Magee, who worked with his father Edward Magee to restore the crumbling storefront, which was built in 1921 as a movie theater. “I hope we can influence local music, give a platform for young musicians and have people come to expect high-caliber, carefully curated performances.”
The Park Theater. Photo courtesy of the venue.
Since 2021 Magee had been hosting live music on the second Saturday of every month, but after some really memorable experiences— hosting The Whale Theatre’s production of “A Christmas Memory” and serving as a venue for the 2023 Hudson Jazz Festival — he says the theater was crying out to be a more active art space.
“I felt like it was in the soul of the building,” Magee says. “So I continue on that path.”
In June of this year the theater opened with live music every Saturday. Performances include a lot of up-and-coming musicians, making the space a vital incubator. Established musicians stop by too, many of whom have local connections, like Hudson’s own Tommy Stinson (formerly of The Replacements and Guns and Roses), Cory Glover (Living Colour), Clark Grayton and others. The schedule continues to expand: Thursdays feature a rotation of open mics, poetry nights, and even wine tastings. Friday nights the thater hosts a rock and roll DJ.
Since most of Hudson’s performance spaces are down the hill, the Park Theater brings more life to the 7th Street Park neighborhood. When the front of the building is open, the park itself feels like a part of the theater.
With all the development happening in Hudson these days and more outside money washing down Warren Street “revitalizing” historic buildings, it may come as a surprise that Magee is a local boy. Raised in Catskill, he grew up with family in Hudson, and has a history of running movie theaters downtown and in Greenport.
Magee went off to college at Hofstra in 1994 and spent the next couple decades working in communications technology, a job that bounced him from coast to coast and eventually to South Africa. He’d been down there for four years and was thinking about staying longer when his father, a lifelong local contractor, sent him the sales listing for the theater building. Around the same period a friend sent him an article about the value of time in one's life, which really influenced his thinking. He cashed in some stock from his early days with the company he still works for (CGI out of Canada) and bought the building in 2016.
“At the time I just wanted to buy my dad the place and give him something to do,” Magee says. “Then I decided to come home and do it with him. Now it’s a continuation of a family legacy of ownership in Hudson.”
During the renovation of the building, there weren’t a lot of surviving decorative details to discover, but there was still the sloped theater floor and the most unique feature, the building's walls and celing are lined with pressed steel, perhaps a unique attempt at fireproofing.
Despite all his research on the Park Theater building, Magee couldn’t find much information on the history of the venue, or what its early shows were like. He only found one writeup in an old newspaper and his family elders didn’t know anything about it either. However, stripping the interior down to its girders, evidence of secret stairs and doors to adjoining buildings revealed themselves. Given that vice and prostitution were Hudson’s stock and trade when the theater originally operated between 1921 and 1945, it’s not hard to imagine why there wasn’t much written about the goings on at the Park Theater in its early days.
There’s plenty to say about it now, though. Magee says October is going to be especially interesting as they lean into the season. Whispering Bones on October 26 will be a ghost story event for all ages. On Halloween weekend, October 28, Stinson will be back with his band Cowboys in the Campfire for a performance that is also focusing on the legitimately scary issue of housing affordability in Hudson.
More information on upcoming shows, along with recordings of past performances, can be found on the Park Theater’s website.
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