History & Handcrafting on Crosby Street

Underneath a bank of skylights in her Crosby Street loft, with all her tools arrayed on a butcher block work table, artist Jill Platner makes her signature feather-like metal jewelry by hand. She’s developed a method for joining pieces of metal so that it drapes like fabric, and she has an acute feel for the material and knowledge of the tools of her trade. And she does all this inside a Federal style house in NoHo that practically radiates American history. Originally built in 1823 as a townhouse for James Roosevelt, an ancestor of FDR, in the 1850s the building housed a hospital run by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first American woman to earn a medical degree. With her sister Emily, also a physician (the sisters were the first and third women in America to earn medical degrees, respectively) Blackwell rented the building in 1857 and made it the home of the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children. With the help of wealthy benefactors, many of them Quaker, the Blackwells ran the first hospital in America that was staffed entirely by women. 

The hospital ran by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell that occupied the Crosby Street building in the 1850s.

Platner is fascinated by the building’s past, and her painstaking work renovating the building has revealed tantalizing pieces of its history. When she first toured it as a young designer in need of studio space in the 1990s, she noticed details like the chisel marks on the wooden beams—clearly the handiwork of a skilled craftsman—and recognized something of a kindred spirit. Platner made the light-filled top floor her studio, then expanded into the adjacent carriage house which is where she fabricates jewelry and makes large-scale metal sculptures.

The original flooring before being salvaged and milled by The Hudson Company.

In 2007 when she was preparing to buy her space, Platner discovered the story of the Blackwell sisters. Her top-floor studio was once the dormitory for the physicians and interns, while the lower floors were devoted to the maternity and illness wards, the pharmacy, and the waiting area. By 2012, when Platner became a part owner of the building, it was badly in need of repairs. There were bulging bricks and the roof was in dire straits. But she was committed to keeping intact as much of the building’s original material as she could, and that’s where The Hudson Company came in. Underneath some particle board, she discovered ten-inch wide boards that were original to the house. Well worn and quite uneven, Platner arranged to send the salvaged boards up to Pine Plains where they were milled and finished, then reinstalled. Now even and uniform, but still full of history and character, the floors are back where they belong on Crosby Street. “It looks incredible,” Platner says. “You can feel history in it.”

Jill Platner’s Studio. Photo credit: Aundre Larrow for The New York Times.

Rediscovering Antique Heart Pine in a Historic New England Textile Mill

At The Hudson Company, we reclaim heritage wood sustainably. Often that means salvaging it from beautiful places like this, the Draper Mill building in Hopedale, Massachusetts, where past and present meet. Though it’s quiet today, this mill—spanning over one million square feet—was once a major industrial hub that produced textiles on high-speed power looms. The Draper family built the mill complex in the 19th century using the preferred building materials of the era. One element in particular was exactly what we hoped we’d find when we visited: Antique Heart Pine timber. Milled and finished according to our exacting specifications, this wood will enjoy a second life as the fine flooring, paneling, and beams we are known for. Luckily, we knew just where to find it.

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE TO SEE OUR ANTIQUE HEART PINE RECLAMATION.

Protecting your floors this winter

Now that the dry months of Winter are upon us, we’d like to remind all our clients and colleagues that it’s important to care for your wood floors by monitoring the environmental conditions in your home, office, and retail spaces.

The natural expansion and contraction of wood caused by relative humidity levels that are either too high or too low can adversely affect floors, paneling, millwork, and even furniture.

Here are a few easy ways to protect and maintain your floors this season:

1. Purchase a digital hygrometer

2. Maintain an interior temperature between 60 - 75 degrees Fahrenheit

3. Maintain an interior relative humidity of 35 - 55%

For more information, please visit the National Wood Flooring Association’s website, or contact The Hudson Company directly.

Why We Manufacture

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States in March, a shift from in-person to remote work swept every “non-essential” workplace practically overnight. Suddenly television news anchors were broadcasting from their homes against subdued digital backdrops. Classrooms went virtual, and students became expert “zoomers.” Museums shifted their operations to the web, and began sharing ever more content via Instagram and virtual events and tours. Novice sourdough bread enthusiasts shared their exploits on social media, while others sang the praises of a popular YouTube-based yoga teacher. Writing in the New York Times, reporter Dana Rubenstein noted that many politicians and journalists doing interviews from home were conspicuously displaying The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s massive 1974 biography of Robert Moses on their shelves, along with elegant ceramics and framed photos within view of the camera lens. (There’s even a Twitter feed that documents Power Broker sightings on TV.) It almost started to feel normal.

Of course, digital and virtual economies were vital before the pandemic, too. High school TikTok stars and Instagram influencers have real power (and make real money) these days, not as hobbyists, but as stand-up comics, singer-songwriters, and as arbiters of fashion and style. But as the experiences of brave essential workers demonstrated starkly at the pandemic’s height, digital work is limited to certain fields and certain kinds of jobs. There is no such thing as a digital emergency room doctor or EMT, or a virtual bus driver, or an online-only grocery store stocker. We live in the flesh and blood world, and we can only conduct certain aspects of our daily lives from behind a glowing screen.

Like every other business, when the pandemic began, The Hudson Company had to quickly find workarounds in order to keep functioning safely. We were already doing certain things that made this transition possible: we have a website, social media feeds, we can share digital documents and images instantly, and we can communicate with clients and colleagues using video chat. But when New York State mandated that non-essential businesses close down in March, we had to close our showrooms and our Pine Plains mill. Just like companies that make fabric, tiles or lighting fixtures, there are things that simply cannot be accomplished virtually.

Take reclamation, for example: the expertise and hand skills necessary to deconstruct a barn or farmhouse are years in the making. Each old barn is unique, and our experts need to know what they’re looking at and how to deconstruct it, which is a different task every time. What kind of wood is it? How old is it? What kind of shape is it in? Then the wood comes to our mill. How should it be treated and processed? What features does our client need for a particular project? The tools and techniques required to mill and finish wood, especially to the high standards we’re known for, are not something that can be mastered overnight, nor can they be accomplished alone. Our team has years of expertise, and they work together in real time to produce the flooring and paneling we offer.

New York State has started lifting some of the restrictions for non-essential businesses, but we’re still practicing social distancing, frequent handwashing and mask-wearing, and probably will continue to do so for some time. This may be our new normal. We usually hear the word “manufacture” in the context of industry, and we picture assembly lines, huge factories, and smart machines making things at high speed. But the word “manufacture” itself predates industry, and its Latin root words mean “to make” (facere) “by hand” (manus). Our digital tools, from Instagram to Zoom, have kept us connected these past few months, and we’re grateful for them. Indeed, we probably couldn’t survive without them. But if this experience has taught us anything, it’s that nothing can replace the know-how, creativity, or trained eye of a human being.

The West Village Townhouse

At The Hudson Company we often reclaim wood from centuries-old barns in rural areas that are miles from the nearest town. But occasionally we find antique treasures in buildings that are right around the corner from the entrance to the nearest Manhattan subway station. For a project with architect David Bucovy in Manhattan’s West Village, we actually salvaged, milled and re-installed wood that was found within the structure of the jobsite itself—adaptive reuse at its best. 

The house sits along one of Greenwich Village’s most beautifully preserved historic streets, and likely dates from the 1840s, according to Bucovy. Over the years it had been occupied by a cast of New York characters, and though it was originally designed as a single-family home, it was later subdivided into apartments, and even housed a dentist’s office for a time. By the time Bucovy encountered it, the whole building needed structural work, so it was a prime candidate for a gut renovation, which he undertook with Scordio Construction. (The landmarked exterior remained as-is).

Some architects and designers approach renovations like this one with an eye toward preserving or reanimating a 19th century aesthetic, recreating interior details that look the part, or finding period-appropriate lighting fixtures and mirrors to visually root the home in another era. Bucovy and his client took a totally different approach: “We had a desire to make it primal and real, rather than a textbook ‘authentic,’ museum-like renovation.” The client wanted to avoid an all-white kitchen and high-gloss paint, and use old world materials instead. “It’s a house about materiality,” Bucovy says, “the story that hand-wrought plaster tells, or woodgrain.”

The home’s renovated interior doesn’t recall that of a typical West Village row house so much as a château in the South of France, with exposed beams, rustic antiques and kitchen tools, and warm plaster walls throughout. The design team avoided painted gypsum board, and instead used a method called tadelakt, a plastering technique popular in Morocco and other parts of North Africa, in which marble dust and plaster are burnished to make a waterproof wall surface. It can be dyed with umber, and has an earthy, ancient look and feel (and indeed, the technique dates back to ancient Rome).

It turned out that some of the original, 19th century wood used throughout the house—a mix of Hemlock, Pine and Spruce, probably local—was perfect for their needs. We worked with the homeowner and the demolition crew and were able to salvage structural timbers and softwood joists. We brought it up to our mill in Pine Plains and processed it as we usually do: removing old nails, resawing and kiln-drying it, ripping, planing, profiling and end-matching the boards so that they could be reinstalled as ceiling and wall panels. We kept the Original Face, which is weathered through a mix of oxidation, patina, and signs of historic use. Bucovy especially likes Original Face for the way “it records its history and imperfections,” he says. 

This aesthetic of exquisite imperfection runs through much of the home’s design and the works of art that the owner installed throughout: wabi-sabi, which is a Japanese concept characterized as the acceptance of imperfection and impermanence. Rooted partly in Buddhist ideals, wabi-sabi celebrates the off-kilter beauty that can be found both in nature and in works of art and design that are asymmetrical, rough, or austere. Bucovy finds inspiration in this concept, and his client happens to be a serious collector of postwar Japanese and Korean art. The aesthetics of these paintings and sculptures happen to dovetail seamlessly with the rustic European look of the interior. Bucovy and the homeowner worked together and sourced both old and new pieces from Belgian art and antiques dealer Axel Vervoort, whose sophisticated farmhouse aesthetic has inspired a renewed enthusiasm for primitive antiques that has thrived despite the lasting dominance of Modernism.

Alongside works of abstract art from Japan and Korea, there are butter-making tools, ceramics, baskets and pieces of furniture dating back to the 1700’s across various parts of Europe. There are Buxy limestone countertops from an extinguished quarry in France. All of these touches complement the wall treatments, hardware and the wood paneling, which has its own story to tell, from 1840’s Greenwich Village, up to the Hudson Valley, and back again in the 21st century.

The pennsylvania barn

This winter, The Hudson Company salvaged lumber from a large 19th century barn in York Springs, PA, a rural farming community in Adams County about 15 miles northeast of Gettysburg. This part of Pennsylvania briefly gained notoriety as a health retreat thanks to the York Sulphur Springs, a summer resort that catered to clientele from Baltimore and Philadelphia, and even hosted George and Martha Washington in 1799. But the construction of the regional railroad shifted traffic away from this part of the state in the 19th century, and it has remained a largely rural enclave ever since. There’s a strong sense of history in this part of the state. Gettysburg was the site of a key battle of the Civil War, and today Gettysburg National Military Park is the most visited battlefield in the United States. Adams County is also the gateway to Pennsylvania Dutch country, and there are nearly 80,000 Amish people—the descendants of Swiss Protestant settlers who eschew modern technology—living in Pennsylvania today. Horse-drawn carriages with bright orange traffic safety signs on the back are a common sight here.

The landscape and architecture of other parts of Pennsylvania—Pittsburgh, Scranton and Philadelphia—were drastically transformed by mining and industry in the 19th and 20th centuries, but this part of the state remains pastoral and green. So it’s no surprise that Pennsylvania is one of the only states in America that has several styles of barn construction named after it. Robert F. Ensminger, an emeritus professor of geography at Kutztown University, developed a typology in his 2003 book The Pennsylvania Barn: Its Origin, Evolution, and Distribution in North America (Johns Hopkins University Press.) Ensminger explains that Pennsylvania’s unique barn architecture is the result of a blending of different European building traditions in collective response to the topography of the region. Immigrants from Germany, Switzerland and the British Isles brought with them the barn construction techniques of their countries of origin, and adapted their designs to suit the landscape they encountered here. He identifies three primary barn types: the Royer-Nicodemus Barn (1790—1900) which were built into hillsides and have overhanging forebays; the Sweitzer or Swisser barn (1730—1850) which are crib-type barns built from logs with overbays and asymmetrical gables; and the Extended Pennsylvania barn, which are taller and wider barns built later in the 19th century with features of the first two types.

The York Springs structure that The Hudson Company recently salvaged was probably an Extended Pennsylvania barn. It has a forebay typical of the Royer-Nicodemus type, which allowed farmers to easily access both the basement and the levels above it. It also has an asymmetrical gable roof like a Sweitzer, so named for the barn Swiss design that likely inspired it. As farming technology improved and productivity increased in the mid-19th century, form followed function, and farmers built larger structures to accommodate livestock, feed, and equipment. The York Springs barn was three stories tall, and had high ceilings on its second level, with many intriguing features. Carved Roman numerals can be found on some of the beams—this may have been a technique for builders to note where each piece of lumber should go in the structure. The floors were built from wide planks. We refer to rustic wood that comes from the area where wheat was likely separated from the chaff as Oak Threshing. As it was deconstructed, the wood beams that supported the upper floor were exposed, revealing a complex, web-like system of interior struts. These are primarily hand-hewn White Oak, and tend to have wonderful characteristics and quirks like mortise holes and pockets. Now all that the wood has been salvaged in York Springs will become the foundational elements of homes and buildings across the United States, extending the life and reach of this centuries-old regional legacy, perhaps for generations to come.

RECLAIMED OAK THRESHING

RECLAIMED OAK THRESHING

HAND HEWN BEAMS

HAND HEWN BEAMS

Before And After: Reclaimed White Pine From A Finger Lakes Farmhouse

‘Rippings,’ scraps created during the process of milling Reclaimed White Pine planks at The Hudson Company Mill in Pine Plains, NY.

‘Before’ detail of raw material.

After being milled by The Hudson Co.

Reclaimed & Re-Milled For A Second Life

The photos above and below illustrate just one example of how The Hudson Company works to redirect historic building materials away from the waste stream and then uses our team of skilled craftspeople to re-mill this valuable material so that it can be put to new uses in a wide variety of applications.

White Pine From NY’s Finger Lakes

The planks shown here are antique pine boards salvaged from a historic farmhouse in the Finger Lakes district of NY in 2018. After being transported to The Hudson Company Mill in Pine Plains, NY, the planks were then sorted, graded, and de-nailed by hand before being re-milled.

And while it may have been hard to see the beauty in these old pine planks when they first arrived in Pine Plains, our team of pros has decades of experience in transforming gray, weather-beaten, and antique planks into stunning new floors.

See for yourself in the photos above and below.

Learn More

Explore our full range of quality flooring products.

Learn more about The Hudson Company’s FSC-certified Mill in Pine Plains, NY.

Learn more about our sustainable wood reclamation process.

The Hudson Company team hard at work de-nailing planks by hand.

The tools of the trade.

The end result.

Go Behind The Scenes And Watch The Full Reclamation Process In Action

OUR ANNUAL CLEARANCE SALE: Aug 16-18, 2018

---

BROWSE Featured Clearance Inventory

Click HERE to see the detailed list of all clearance inventory product specs.  including product cut, milling details, grade,  dimensions, lengths, and sale prices.*

*NOTE: This master inventory list and all specs will be updated daily throughout the clearance sales event and details are subject to change.

Learn more about our FSC-certified mill in Pine Plains, NY.

---

Go Behind The Scenes

The Hudson Company Story

Go behind the scenes and see how The Hudson Company sustainably sources, mills, and finishes a wide range custom floors, high-character wood paneling products, and reclaimed timber beams. Locally owned and vertically integrated, The Hudson Company proudly provides the A&D industry with New York's finest wood floors and surfaces. 

Click any of the video stills below to view The Hudson Company video, filmed and edited by Jenner Brown, with titles by Amanda Jane Jones. 

After watching the behind-the-scenes video,  visit us at our FSC-Certified mill in Pine Plains, NY (Mon - Fri 8-5) for a first person visit. We would love to help you with your next design project.

It All Begins At The Source

Milling Great Floors Starts At The Source

Knowing the origin of each and every product we create allows us to pass on a meaningful narrative that our clients have come to expect. You can learn more about our sustainable sourcing practices here.

Learn More About Our FSC-Certified Mill in Pine Plains, NY.

Learn How Wood is Reclaimed and Custom Milled.

Request A Quote For Your Next Project.