{"id":102,"date":"2016-10-17T20:54:21","date_gmt":"2016-10-18T00:54:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/disrupt2create.com\/upstaterdemo\/?p=102"},"modified":"2017-03-02T10:18:33","modified_gmt":"2017-03-02T15:18:33","slug":"jamie-hammel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/upstater.com\/jamie-hammel\/","title":{"rendered":"Jamie Hammel – Founder and President, The Hudson Company"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo by Karen Pearson<\/em><\/h2>\n

HOMETOWN: <\/strong>Reading, Pennsylvania
\n LIVES IN: <\/strong>Brooklyn Heights
\n WORKS IN: <\/strong>Dumbo (showroom), Pine Plains (headquarters), and on the road
\nEMPLOYS: 35 people in Pine Plains with full benefits. \u201cI\u2019m proud that we\u2019re bringing manufacturing back to New York [State].\u201d
\n LOVE\/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH: <\/strong>Ikea. \u201cI\u2019ve got some Ikea pieces and they\u2019re great. There\u2019s a place for Ikea in this world. But I don\u2019t think people want to live in an Ikea world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Walking around the Hudson Company\u2019<\/a>s headquarters in Pine Plains, northeastern Dutchess County, is like walking through the detritus of the 20th century. Mountains of wood are stacked outside, and company founder and president Jamie Hammel knows where every piece came from. There\u2019s wood from factories in Pennsylvania built just after the Civil War, fallen barns from the Hudson Valley, and decommissioned water tanks that once perched atop New York City roofs. But the Hudson Company isn\u2019t a graveyard. It\u2019s a place of rebirth.<\/p>\n

The company rescues the region\u2019s architectural history and turns it by hand into floors, beams, paneling, and molding for architects\u2019 use, including in some major projects. Last year the Renzo Piano Design Workshop<\/a> and Cooper Robertson Architects<\/a> turned 60,000 square feet of Hudson Company\u2019s reclaimed heart pine into the new Whitney Museum<\/a>\u2019s floor, creating the largest reclaimed floor in the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a strong trend in consumers to want to know where their product came from and how it was made,\u201d says Hammel.<\/p>\n

In 2010, when Hammel founded the Hudson Company, the reclaimed wood industry had a bad name. Materials were often harvested using unscrupulous practices (including outright theft), and there was no guarantee that a floor would be delivered as ordered. But Hammel took advantage of the antique lumber marketplace\u2019s growing hunger for bespoke, handmade products by developing a high standard of quality with guarantees and warranties. \u201cI like design, and the floor is the canvas on which you build everything,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Before reclaimed wood became trendy, Hammel often got wood for free from demolition crews. Now, people with old barns on their property or developers taking down factories look to see if they can sell Hammel the materials. \u201cIn New York, the architectural landscape is evolving so rapidly,\u201d he says. \u201cBuildings are constantly coming down. I\u2019m always out looking at barns.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sometimes the journey from the wood\u2019s origin to its final destination is short. When the elevated railway in Manhattan\u2019s Meatpacking District was being transformed into the High Line urban park, the Hudson Company recovered its beams and joists, took them upstate for processing, and returned them for reinstallation. The project\u2019s carbon footprint was essentially nil.<\/p>\n

But the environmental benefit of reusing old wood isn\u2019t always what attracts people. \u201cWe don\u2019t get a lot of clients who say \u2018I want to do the right thing for the environment,\u2019\u201d he says. \u201cPeople like reclaimed wood because they like stories. They like the insect tracks, the nail holes, the ferrous stains, the patina. They want to be able to say, \u2018Oh, this came from a barn in Ohio,\u2019 or \u2018This was the Coney Island boardwalk.\u2019\u201d
\nThe company also deals in \u201cselect harvest\u201d woods: storm-felled trees, dead standing trees, and trees cut down by independent sawyers. Sometimes sustainably harvested trees are more appealing than reclaimed wood to clients\u2014and to Hammel himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had such anxiety about what floor to put in our new apartment,\u201d he says about the space where he lives with his wife, son, and daughter. \u201cI\u2019d been hoarding the best reclaimed boards for myself for the past five years, so I had built up this massive collection of really special, unique boards. And in the end I was like, \u2018Nah, let\u2019s just go with new oak.\u2019 The planks are nice and wide, and it\u2019s rich in detail and character. I love it.\u201d<\/p>\n\"\"\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by Karen Pearson HOMETOWN: Reading, Pennsylvania LIVES IN: Brooklyn Heights WORKS IN: Dumbo (showroom), Pine Plains (headquarters), and on the road EMPLOYS: 35 people in Pine Plains with full benefits. \u201cI\u2019m proud that we\u2019re bringing manufacturing back to New York [State].\u201d LOVE\/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH: Ikea. \u201cI\u2019ve got some Ikea pieces and they\u2019re great. There\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":60947,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1063,1563,1333,788,102],"tags":[1553,1566,1567,1568],"yoast_head":"\nJamie Hammel - Founder and President, The Hudson Company - Upstater<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/upstater.com\/jamie-hammel\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Jamie Hammel - Founder and President, The Hudson Company - Upstater\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Photo by Karen Pearson HOMETOWN: Reading, Pennsylvania LIVES IN: Brooklyn Heights WORKS IN: Dumbo (showroom), Pine Plains (headquarters), and on the road EMPLOYS: 35 people in Pine Plains with full benefits. \u201cI\u2019m proud that we\u2019re bringing manufacturing back to New York [State].\u201d LOVE\/HATE RELATIONSHIP WITH: Ikea. \u201cI\u2019ve got some Ikea pieces and they\u2019re great. 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