Portal:Hudson Valley

The Rosendale Theatre is a three-story, 300-seat movie theater and performance venue in Rosendale Village, New York. The building was originally a casino built in 1905, and began showing films in the 1920s. By the 1930s, a stage had been installed for live vaudeville and burlesque acts. A private individual, Anthony Cacchio Sr., rented the building in 1949 and converted it into a movie theater, which he owned outright by the mid-1950s. In its early years, the Theatre showed about 300 different movies each year, making it unpopular with film distributors. Denied easy access to first run films, the Theatre turned to independent movies and art films, and eventually began exhibiting live performances. Cacchio's entire family helped him run the Theatre.

After more than 60 years of continuous operation, the Cacchio family decided to sell the Theatre. Rather than sell to real estate developers, the Cacchios preferred to transfer the property to the Rosendale Theatre Collective, a nonprofit formed for the sole purpose of buying and preserving the Theatre. The group spent months raising funds for a down payment on the building, with the bulk of its money coming from small individual donations, though a large grant was provided by PepsiCo after a successful social networking campaign for the April 2010 Pepsi Refresh Project. The Theatre Collective assumed ownership in August 2010. Since its purchase, the Theatre has had several equipment upgrades, including a move to digital cinema.

• ... that the land for the Captors' Monument (pictured) at Patriot's Park in Sleepy Hollow and Tarrytown, New York, was donated by a free African American couple?
• ... that undefeated Boyd Melson donates all the money he earns in boxing matches to stem cell research?
• ... that to save money on the construction of St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Amenia Union, New York, the congregants brought building materials to the site with their own horse teams?

John A. Degnan (born 1960) is an American politician. He was elected to one term as Mayor of Brewster, New York serving from 2005 to 2007. He has been involved in issues regarding illegal immigration in New York, as well environmental policy, having been called to testify in April of 2008 before the United States House of Representatives Infrastructure Subcommittee on Water Resources and the Environment discussing Superfund sites before members of Congress at the invitation of Congressman John Hall. Degnan graduated from Fordham University with a degree in economics, and studied Construction Management and Finance at New York University. He was a real estate contractor before beginning his political career serving four terms as a Brewster Village Trustee. Brewster is a community of about 2,000 people, with an undocumented day-laborer population estimated to be as many as 600 to 1,000.