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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. Archives • Read more...