Inside one mans crazy plan to create Broadways version of Woodstock in upstate New York including a Rent reunion
The Hutton Company Brick Works literally built New York brick by brick.For over a century, thousands of brickmakers mixed, molded, dried and baked the city’s most essential building blocks on a 100-acre site along the banks of the Hudson River, in the city of Kingston.
Look inside the walls of the Empire State Building, Grand Central Terminal, the Cloisters and many other New York landmarks, and you will find a brick bearing the Hutton stamp.The kilns went cold in 1980, and the yards sat in ruins for decades.But when Broadway enthusiast Joshua Saltman first saw the old brickyard, he knew this was the missing block for building his own grand vision: a Broadway “Woodstock” — just down the road from where the original festival took place. “The area where there’s going to be performances is built on a landfill of millions of broken, discarded bricks.
It feels historic,” he told The Post in the days leading up to The Festival — aka Broadway Fest — his one-of-a-kind, three-day theater extravaganza taking place next weekend.Can he move 42nd Street a hundred miles north for the weekend? And will audiences come?The Festival’s main pavilion stage sits beneath the roof of one of the original factory buildings.Two other stages, along with dining venues, campfire grounds and a “stage door” area for autographs, are planned among the site’s hulking ruins.
On one side, derelict kiln sheds serve as an industrial backdrop.On another, the gantry crane that once loaded pallets of bricks onto barges still reaches out into the river.The revitalized Hutton Brickyards — recast in recent years as a luxury venue — is a fittingly unexpected setting for what will be a music-filled “weekend in the country,” as The Festival is billing its Friday-night opener.
The Festival’s VIP talent is star-studded: Scheduled singers include Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, Renée Elise Goldsberry, Christopher Jackson and Brian Stokes Mitchell.Starting Friday afternoon...