Hastings Theatre

shoeshoe14 on August 11, 2008 at 6:53 pm

I was cycling through this sleepy little town on the Hudson. The town’s center has a map of historical buildings and each building/place like this theatre have their own plaques on the buildings entrances.

Anyway, the Hastings Theatre opened in December 1920 with Douglas Fairbanks in “The Mark of Zorro”. The theatre was named after local architect, Foster Hastings.

I arrived just in time to see a worker opening one of the 2 main black gates at 2pm Sunday. The marquee is new looking and there’s a vertical sign above the marquee saying “Hastings.” The horizontal double-sided marquee says, “Moviehouse Mews” (look it up on dictionary.com) “Featuring the Good Things in Hastings.”

Entering on the left there are 5 businesses with nice bay windows and accompanying doors, like a little plaza with trees and square benches against the retaining wall. The businesses are under a canopy with stilts so you can walk under it in shade.

The lady owned the children’s consignment shop, Milkmoney, on the far left and said the theatre closed in 1988 when she was in college. The next place was a coffee and tea shop, jeweler, hair salon and nail salon. Some had drop ceilings, others didn’t.

520 seats? It seems a heck of a lot smaller.