Travel east to the end of Ryawa Avenue in Hunts Point, past the Pepsi warehouse, the hubcap and welding shops and the garbage transfer center, open the door of a red brick warehouse and you might be surprised to find an Egyptian temple.
Inside sit a jewel-studded sphinx and an ebony goddess.
But the gods are made of plastic and canvas. The temple is merely a fantasy. In the next room is the factory of Hudson Scenic Studio, the largest of the three major custom scenery suppliers in the city. It is a place where dreams are made.
Its handiwork includes sets for the Tony Awards, the road show of "Miss Saigon," and several shows now on Broadway, including "Crazy for You," "Arcadia" and "Having Our Say."
Some of their sets for Broadway extravaganzas cost up to $1 million. The latest industry innovation is flight motion simulation to spin and fly props through the air -- like the helicopter that lands on stage in `Miss Saigon."
"It's choreographed like a robot. It's like another actor," said Corky Boyd, Hudson's mechanization specialist.
The company, the borough's only scenery maker, moved in 1984 to Hunts Point from Cornwall-on-Hudson in Putnam County to be closer to Broadway. Leasing in Manhattan was too expensive. "It's about $40 a square foot in the city versus $15 here," said John Larkin, Hudson's controller.
The firm also received an additional incentive: Con Edison gives discounts to businesses moving to depressed areas. Hudson receives 10 percent off its monthly energy bill.
In an industry where margins are slim, every little bit helps. But Hudson executives give mixed reviews to economic development and city services in the borough. When the firm decided to build new offices, executives looked into city financing for the $200,000 they needed. Because the company generated sales of more than $50,000 and less than $1 million, it didn't qualify for a loan.
Larkin said the city never plowed the company's side street, Lighting Place, in the heavy snows of 1993-94, and the company spent $2,000 on snow removal.
Dennis Agazzi, assistant superintendent of the Sanitation Department in the borough, said of the allegation, "I find it hard to believe. Because of the heavy snows it might have seemed like the street wasn't plowed. But why didn't the company get in touch with the community board if it had a complaint?"
Larkin also said Hudson spends $20,000 a year cleaning up the broken bottles and trash that accumulate on Ryawa Avenue after weekend drag races. Capt. Steven Silks of the 41st Precinct said the crackdowns on illegal drinking and food vending and car safety checks done last August substantially reduced drag racing in the area.
"But," he added," there is a lot of dumping that goes on in that area and people like to picnic around there on weekends."
Nevertheless, since moving to the borough, Hudson has prospered. Six years after renting the 14,000 square feet at 125 Bruckner Boulevard in Mott Haven, it moved to the 50,000-square-foot warehouse on Ryawa in 1990.
This year, business continues to pick up; the company is expected to show a 10 percent sales increase over last year -- thanks, in large part, to work unassociated with Broadway, Larkin said.
One recent megaproject includes a fantasy forest, with four lifelike 40-foot trees, built for EFX and transported in a trailer to the show in Las Vegas.
But Broadway sets are perhaps the most exciting to do, offering workers a sneak preview of what is headed for Broadway. The sets for "Victor/Victoria" -- a musical starring Julie Andrews, due to open in October -- are under construction. A midnight blue backdrop glitters with 810 fiber optic lights, to simulate a starry night.
In the center of the factory floor, the play's night club, Chez Louis, is being assembled: the green copper roofs of a Paris townhouse are going up. And for a minute, above the whine of the drill and the hiss of the welding torch, you can almost hear the sound of an accordion playing.