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In December 2015 Ambassador Theatre Group (ATG) bought the lease for the Hudson Theatre in New York. This was a very exciting moment in the history of the ever-growing British company that had already purchased its first Broadway theatre two years prior, the Lyric Theatre. The Lyric Theatre would eventually become the home of the smash hit Harry Potter and the Cursed Child on Broadway. At the time, the purchase of the Hudson Theatre meant that the number of theatres owned by ATG globally was forty-six.
The news of the purchase spread fast, and the ATG team were all particularly excited by this announcement since it meant they would most likely have the opportunity to work with another important historic building on Broadway. While working on the interiors of the Lyric Theatre a year prior to this, I had been tasked in my role as Head of Interior Design for ATG with visiting some potential theatre sites that the company had its eye on for expansion in the United States. During these visits, it became obvious that some of these protected theatres had, sadly, almost been forgotten, that some simply required far too much investment to succeed, and that others were true gems brimming with potential.
One of the venues was an intimate and historic playhouse called the Hudson Theatre.
A First Impression
David Blyth (ATG's Property Director at the time) and I first encountered the Hudson back in 2014 to scope out its potential and give feedback on its condition. The building was almost easy to miss. Not only did its exterior look a bit dour and understated-a classic Beaux Arts structure of its time-but it was also sandwiched between two 1990s hotels, the imposing Millennium Broadway Hotel and its smaller sister The Premier Hotel, on 145 West 44th Street. Looking past these towering buildings, the ever-present scaffolding, and the bustling restaurants on the street, it wasn't difficult to visualize what it would have looked like back in 1903 when the theatre first launched. An immediately striking feature was a massive set of six beautifully glazed entrance doors. By 2014, the Hudson was being programmed as a wedding venue and multipurpose events space for the owner and operator of the Millennium and Premier Hotels,...