Concrete on Main Street, 2010

Sculpture: MAY 15 & 16 1 pm @ Willow Kiln Park

Buster Keaton Film: May 15 @ 3 pm, May 16 @ 12 noon at the Rosendale Theater

On May 15th & 16th, for the second year, Rosendale resident and modern designer, Johnny Poux, will use the material that made Rosendale famous in uncommon ways. Concrete on Main Street is free to the public and will feature large-scale kinetic sculpture in cast concrete, wood and steel, amidst the park's backdrop of now-defunct cement kilns and the looming train trestle.

About the 2009 show, Poux states, "Willow Kiln Park was a great place for the show. Historic significance aside, this space provided an expansive natural "room" to take in larger sculptures." More than 240 adults and children assembled from the Hudson Valley, NYC, and Westchester. The work was still accessible and the noise level reasonable. Parents could linger while their children played in the small stream that trickles through the site...

This year's event will not only show Poux's signature sculptures, it will include showing of Buster Keaton's classic film "The General" at the Rosendale Movie Theatre. Ticket sales for this family-friendly event will support the Rosendale Theatre Collective. Viewing this iconic film provides an exceptional experience of cinema with a potential for broad appeal to generations of people who have never experienced a silent movie on a big screen.

Food, drink and advertising are being provided by our sponsors: Chronogram, Town of Rosendale, Market Market Cafe, Rosendale Cafe, Alternative Baker, Red Brick Tavern, and Keegan Ales.

Why do it?

Rosendale, a picturesque town in the Hudson Valley, is here because of what is beneath it. In 1825, the discovery of Natural Cements made Rosendale, NY famous and for a century Rosendale mined, cooked and sold its cement at a furious pace to a growing country that was ravenously expanding.

Rosendale Cements became world renowned and used in the construction of some of the most enduring landmarks of the nation: The Brooklyn Bridge, the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty, the wings of the U.S. Capitol, the lower 152' of the Washington Monument, the Croton Aqueduct and dams, the Pennsylvania Railroad tunnels, the New York State Thruway, and thousands of other public works projects. By the early 20th Century, Rosendale Cement was replaced by Portland Cement. The canal that ran though town transporting coal and cement closed, and Rosendale's economy slowed into a depression from which it has never recovered. The industrial archaeology of Rosendale is everywhere. Giant stone and brick cement kilns haunt the hillsides and abandoned quarries as they slowly degenerate. In town, the idle train trestle is a prominent presence, looming approximately one hundred forty feet above the Rondout Creek, which runs parallel to Main Street. The architectural relics that hover in this town are reminders of diligent people, steamrolled by an economic boom and bust. Concrete on Main Street pays homage to and reminds us of this town's roots and its forgotten people.