Hudson Beach Glass for Sale

Main Street anchor in Beacon opened in 2003 

Hudson Beach Glass, a Main Street fixture in Beacon for the past 22 years, has put its building and business at 162 Main St. on the market for $3.75 million. The two couples that own the glassworks hope to retire.

Founded in 1987, Hudson Beach Glass opened its Main Street gallery in October 2003, two years after John and Wendy Gilvey and Michael Benzer and Jennifer Smith paid $270,000 to purchase 162 Main from the city. The three-story brick structure, built in 1893 as the Lewis Tompkins Hose Co. firehouse, later was home to the nonprofit Community Action Coalition.

When the new owners took over, the structure was “in terrible shape, with plumbing issues and windows falling out,” said John Gilvey. But “we knew we were on the precipice of something happening,” Smith said — which was the arrival of Dia Beacon, a 240,000-square-foot museum on the waterfront that jumpstarted a cultural renaissance for the city.

After buying the building, the couples had $30,000 left. They completed the rehabilitation with a $300,000 federal loan. 

John Gilvey and Benzer met in 1975, the year Gilvey began making glass. They kept in touch sporadically before running into each other at All Sport Health & Fitness in Fishkill in 1984. “All of the showers were taken, so we’re both standing there naked,” Benzer recalled. “It was a perfect way to start a business.” Gilvey had been taking his creations to trade shows since 1977 and, by 1982, had contracts with major department stores. 

After graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1982, Benzer began hot-casting glass tiles and custom shapes out of a Maple Street facility that still doubles as his home. Placing an ornamental bowl on a tile-turned-saucer, his work was both decorative and functional, “and it took off — fast,” said Gilvey. 

Benzer and Smith handled manufacturing and shipping while the Gilveys, craft-fair warriors, managed marketing and customer service. In 1999, a college friend called Benzer to alert him that the Dia Art Foundation was negotiating to open its museum in a former Nabisco box factory.

“That’s when we concentrated all our energy on finding a location” for a glassworks and showroom, Benzer said. They looked on the east end of Main, where Ron Sauers and Doug Berlin were redeveloping brownstones. They considered the building that is now home to Alps Sweet Shop. Eventually they beat out two other bidders for the 6,300-square-foot former firehouse, which had been decommissioned two decades earlier. 

“It was perfect timing to stop schlepping things around and have people come to us,” said Wendy Gilvey. “People came all this way, and when they got up to Main Street, they were happy to find us.” 

On a cold, rainy day in January 2003, Hudson Beach Glass opened its doors for Beacon’s first Second Saturday, which was modeled on Philadelphia’s First Fridays. Despite having no heat and only a single shelf of glassware, “people actually came and bought stuff,” John Gilvey said. “We started bringing in people who wouldn’t normally come to a glass studio. That worked for us. When those people needed to buy a wedding gift, they came here.”

Mayor Lee Kyriacou, who joined the City Council in 1993, said he hopes that similarly creative investors will emerge to purchase the decommissioned Beacon Engine and Mase Hook and Ladder fire stations that the city listed for sale this week. “You’re walking up Main Street and it’s hard to miss them,” he said of Hudson Beach Glass. “You can see how important they are and what a great job they did” rehabbing a high-profile building.

Once 162 Main St. is sold, the Gilveys plan to travel with their three children and two grandchildren. One son considered taking over the business but opted instead for Boundless Life, a program that offers a “globally connected education” for families willing to travel. It will take the family this fall to Tuscany for three months, with Japan, Greece and Spain as possible future destinations.

Benzer and Smith will remain in their Maple Street home “growing food and making stuff,” Benzer said. Artists never really retire, they say.