Hudson Company

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Sculpted mushroom wood at Art Omi in Ghent.

Mountains of wood are stacked outside the Hudson Company's headquarters in Pine Plains, and company founder and president Jamie Hammel knows where every piece came from. There's wood from factories in Pennsylvania built just after the Civil War and from decommissioned water tanks that once perched atop New York roofs. But the Hudson Company isn't a graveyard. It's a place of rebirth. The FSC-certified wood mill in Dutchess County specializes in reclaimed and select harvest wood products, rescuing the region's architectural relics and turning them into floors, beams, paneling, and molding for architects' use. Hammel has taken advantage of the antique lumber marketplace's growing hunger for bespoke, handmade products by developing a high standard of quality with guarantees and warranties, and he continues to ride that wave. In 2015, 60,000 square feet of Hudson Company's reclaimed heart pine was used as flooring for the new Whitney Museum, creating the largest reclaimed floor in the country. "People like reclaimed wood because they like stories," says Hammel. "They like the insect tracks, the nail holes, the ferrous stains, the patina. They want to be able to say, 'Oh, this came from a barn in Ohio,' or 'This was the Coney Island boardwalk.'" Thehudsonco.com