Design Diary: Vintage Adventure at The Milliner in Hudson, NY
Welcome to Design Diary. This month hosts a multitude of holidays in which family rituals, feasting and fasting are celebrated, but in upstate New York we also enjoy the annual reboot of our rich regional culture and the greening of farm and garden. Thrilled that April is flaunting abundant floral bouquets, friends feathered and furred are emerging to nest, foal and farrow. Spring has officially sprung in upstate New York.
In addition to sightseers and tourists, the local folks who call the Hudson Valley home, and especially those in bustling Hudson, are once again outside chewing the fat of politics, or a grass-fed burger (or both). Exploring Hudson on a balmy afternoon, we wander down Warren to No. 415. Stopping here, we enter an imposing 19th-century property and walk to the back of a vast open gallery, gazing up at the richly ornamented pressed tin ceilings.
This is The Hudson Milliner — a former hat manufacturer and home to a suite of distinctive B&B guest rooms, just up the stairs. Hidden behind the 1300-square-foot exhibit space is the recently acquired apartment of co-owners and partners in life, Shannon Greer and Charlotta Janssen. Five years ago Rural Intelligence featured The Hudson Milliner, A Guest House & Inn, focusing on the ambitious renovation of this historic building and the genesis of their now-established inn. Design Diary decided to check in and see what’s new with the creative couple.
Back in 2011, after visiting Hudson on and off for years, Brooklynites Greer and Janssen discovered The Milliner, and with it a future business and a second home. The best of both worlds seemed possible in this tiny town teeming with former NYC residents, entrepreneurs, artists and designers. Attracted to the cosmopolitan energy and charmed by this hat factory’s history, they dove into the hospitality business at a time little commercial lodging was available. The feather in the hat of this property was The Milliner’s enormous storefront, quickly rented to an artisanal furniture maker, and a bonus painting studio for Charlotta.
Half a decade has passed since the purchase, renovation and solid success of The Milliner. The town has grown more diverse, now boasting multiple chic taverns, inns and lodging (with more on the way). Over the years, the elegant accommodations at The Milliner were always reserved for guests, so these two weekend bohemians would camp out in her painting studio. Although financially efficient, it lacked sufficient privacy and the leg room they both craved.
This winter the furniture designer vacated the gallery space and the couple made the thrilling decision to renovate and finally move into the vintage pied-a-terre nested just behind it. At long last they could enjoy being guests at The Milliner, and fully experience what Charlotta describes as their “faux country” lifestyle. Here they inhabit an altered reality — a 19th-century home, replete with marvelous details such as a rare vintage copper bathtub, Victorian bed frame and early 20th-century appliances. Other eccentricities include custom-printed wallpaper in the bathroom, which they selected and printed on Shannon’s printer. They laughingly refer to the former front gallery as their “living room.”
The apartment is compact, but a generous amount of southern light floods their new home, a key requirement for a professional photographer and a fine art painter (did I mention she also owns Chez Oscar, a French Bistro restaurant in Bed-Sty?). Needless to say, with all the buzz about Hudson, they are grateful that it still remains more relaxing than Brooklyn. They genuinely relish the valuable time they spend upstate, cultivating cultural relationships in the salon or across the street at The Spotty Dog Books & Ale.
Shannon’s personal photography (commercial clients include Harper’s Bazaar, Target and Citbank, among others) is shot with his trusty Canon 5D Mark IV, and will soon grace the walls of the art salon/living room. This new work will replace Charlotta’s bold narrative paintings of the 1960’s Freedom Riders, which was on display through the winter. Some days they host a Ju-Jitsu class and the Salon is available for private events. Living by a philosophy of “give what you can, take what you need,” it appears that Hudson is the winner.
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