In 2020, when Jamie Hammel toured a countryside lot in Pound Ridge, New York, about an hour’s drive from his family’s primary residence in Brooklyn, he found something that drew him in. Dotted with birch, magnolia, pine, and ash trees, the Westchester County property included “original stacked stone walls reminiscent of a New England farm that really spoke to me,” a “modest farmhouse,” and a pair of “shingled barns from the 1850s that had been connected in some very crude, rudimentary way,” describes Hammel, a father of two and founder of the Hudson Company, a hardwood specialist whose mill is in Pine Plains, New York. “The rooflines of these buildings were a total eyesore, but the property was really special,” he adds.
Architect Rafe Churchill advised him not to purchase it. “It’s got five generations of renovations. I could see that there was going to be rot, and that the framing is going to be very iffy because it wasn’t done by top-notch builders,” recalls the principal of Sharon, Connecticut–based and AD PRO Directory firm Hendricks Churchill. In the end, Hammel’s nostalgic feeling won out. That summer, he, his wife, Lizzie, and their family began spending time at the historic hodgepodge residence, a halfway point between the mill and their home base in the city, knowing it would need an update eventually.
“The vision was to make this a Hudson Company renovation,” says Hammel. However, after a year living with the home’s questionable plumbing and patchy insulation, “it was clear that we needed to assemble a team of true experts.” Tasked with transforming the multiple structures into a well-organized house, Hammel engaged two other longtime collaborators for the project in addition to Churchill: designer Brad Ford and builder Ralph Riccio of Greenfield Hill Builders.
