Hudson Company Reclaimed Heart Pine Floors on Architizer.com

Hudson Company Reclaimed Heart Pine [Chalk Finish] featured on Architizer.com

We were thrilled last week, when The Hudson Company's Reclaimed Heart Pine [Chalk Finish] floors were featured on Architizer.com as one of their featured 'Products of the Day.'

The timing of Architizer's feature on Reclaimed Heart Pine [Chalk Finish] seems especially apropos as we approach the first anniversary of the opening of New York's new Whitney Museum of American Art - a large-scale installation in which The Hudson Company provided over 60,000 square feet of wide plank, Heart Pine floors. To meet the custom design needs for the new Whitney project, The Hudson Company collaborated with the architectural teams at The Renzo Piano Design Workshop and Cooper Robertson Architects throughout 2013 and 2014. At the time of the Museum's opening, Jerry Saltz of New York Magazine described the Whitney's interiors and floors as, 'open, simple, Shaker-like; the wide-plank pine floors are perfect.' 

But whether installed on a massive scale (a la the new Whitney Museum) or used in a more intimate, residential application, there is just something special about these particular Reclaimed Wood flooring.

About Reclaimed Heart Pine [Chalk Finish]

Part of what make's our Reclaimed Heart Pine so special is its unique origin story. 

For the past two centuries, Longleaf Heart Pine was a predominant standing timber across a large span of the eastern seaboard. Its prevalence and unique properties made it the most widely utilized timber in American construction. 

Today, our Reclaimed Heart Pine flooring are sourced from abandoned or de-commissioned factories and warehouses located around the Hudson River Valley, some of which were constructed during the Industrial Revolution. You can learn more about The Hudson Company's reclamation process in our three part series 'Crafting The Whitney Floors.'

Product Specs:

Hudson Company Reclaimed Heart Pine [Chalk Finish] floors are available at dimensions of 3/4" x 4-8" x 2-12'. Tongue & Groove. End Matched. Shown pre-finished in Chalk. Floors are also available unfinished.

Click here to learn more or quote Reclaimed Heart Pine for your next project.

Renzo Piano On The Vision Behind The New Whitney Museum

In this short but insightful video for Architectural Record, architect Renzo Piano discusses his firm's creative problem-solving process and the importance of the structural 'spine' of the new Whitney Museum of American Art. 

Click here to learn more about The Hudson Company's collaboration with Renzo Piano Building Workshop for new The Whitney Museum in NYC.

Crafting The Whitney Floors | Part 3

Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Kelly Crow notes that the design of art museums has traditionally fallen within two camps: classicism or stark modernity.

Historically, collectors encouraged museums to create spaces that resembled cultural temples, with classical columns and ornate crown moulding to match the significance of the objects on display. In recent decades, many museums and galleries favored an architecture of stark white-cube rooms with walls treated in sleek, modern finishes...

[Yet] when the Whitney began considering designs more than a decade ago, Adam Weinberg, the director, said he asked architects for the exact opposite.

Ms. Crow goes on to describe how the new Whitney Museum of American Art is a museum, 'designed to wow artists as much as audiences.' In her piece on the new Renzo Piano designed museum, Crow outlines Mr. Piano's intentions for the Whitney to be a new kind of museum - one that invites curators and artists alike to be flexible, innovative, even playful:

'...the 84-year-old [Whitney] museum is changing far more than its address...

The new building’s nearly 50,000 square feet of gallery floors will be made of neither trendy concrete nor lavish marble. Instead, Whitney officials chose reclaimed Heart Pine from former area factories, so artists could hammer nails into it or tear up small sections if needed. (The museum has a cache of extra planks in case anyone does.)

A lattice-like grid on the ceiling of the main gallery means artists won’t have to cut through drywall to suspend their work. That 18,200-square-foot room has no columns, making it the largest museum gallery in New York City with uninterrupted views.”

Donna De Salvo, the museum's chief curator, told ABC News that, 'artists will be inspired by the new spaces and will "reinvent them over and over again." They're tailored to the needs of how artists — and curators — work, she said. Floors throughout are sprung, allowing for both performance and installations. Open-grid ceilings permit walls and art to be arranged into multitude configurations.'

In crafting the over 50,000 square feet of Reclaimed Heart Pine flooring for the new Whitney Museum, The Hudson Company is honored to be a part of this landmark of innovative, contextual, and culturally-significant architecture.

The industrial history of the Reclaimed Heart Pine floors (sourced from decommissioned American factories) supports the Whitney’s mission to create a space that Director Weinberg calls, 'rough and ready' artist’s canvas.  The nature and dimensions of the Reclaimed Heart Pine flooring, along with it's intentionally flexible profile, allows for the floors, like so much at the new Whitney, to be modified to best fit the needs of the museum, artists, and audiences using the space. 

Click for more details about The Hudson Company Reclaimed Heart Pine [Chalk Finish] flooring featured throughout the new Whitney Museum of American Art.

Click to learn more about The Hudson Company + Whitney Museum Design Installation.

Click to watch the new Hudson Company Video.

Detail of Reclaimed Heart Pine [Chalk Finish] installed at new Whitney site.

Floor during install.

Floor Install, NYC Skyline in the background.

Flooring Install, during finishing.

Whitney floor, during install.

All Installation Photos by Martin Hyers of Gentyl&Hyers Photography for The Hudson Company. Cover photo by Max Touhey for ny.curbed.com.

Crafting The Whitney Floors | Part 2

Writing for The New York Times on April 19, Michael Kimmelman described the new Whitney Museum of American Art this way:

'There’s a generosity to the architecture, a sense of art connecting with the city and vice versa...

Inside, irregularly weathered pine floors recycled from old factories temper a language of concrete and steel. Those same industrial materials break up the mass of the building on the outside, by turns refracting and absorbing sunlight, nudging upward, gently, the scale of a swiftly growing neighborhood.'

The story behind these 'irregularly weathered pine floors recycled from old factories' is, in fact, a rather remarkable one - the journey of rough, antique, and landfill-bound timbers carefully re-imagined and re-engineered as the flooring for New York City's newest architectural landmark.

Custom Milling The Whitney Floors

After reclaiming the raw timber materials from inactive American factories (Phillip Morris, Maidenform, Paul G. Mehlin & Sons Piano Company), The Hudson Company embarked on the fully-integrated, custom milling process, in collaboration with Cooper Robertson and The Renzo Piano Building Workshop, the museum's lead architects. 

The final Whitney installation exceeds 65,000 square feet of Reclaimed Heart Pine [Chalk Finish] flooring throughout all of the galleries and administrative offices.  In order to deliver the final product, The Hudson Company custom milled over 270,000 board feet of reclaimed timbers. These sizeable timbers ranged in size from 4” x 17” x 22’ to 11” x 17” x 24’, some weighing in excess of 1,200 pounds.

Once the raw material arrived at our Pine Plains, NY facility, metal detectors were used to locate old fasteners (nails, bolts, screws) embedded within the timbers, and then all unwanted debris is removed by hand.

Next, utilizing our 75 HP fully hydraulic 6” double edge blade saw mill, we milled the timbers into manageable dimensions (1.75" x 10" x 8-20').  Because the Whitney floor was uniquely designed to be 1.5” x 8,” we oversized the the flooring planks to 1.75” x 10" and then kiln dried each plank to 165 degrees Fahrenheit eliminating any remaining insect life and setting the pitch for stability and proper finishing.

From here, the Whitney floors went through the remaining steps of The Hudson Company's hands-on, custom milling process: the planks were re-graded, planed, ripped, molded, and checked for defects and unwanted irregularities before delivery.

Click for more information about The Hudson Company, our team, and for galleries of our reclaimed and custom-milled flooring installation projects.

Click to watch The Hudson Company sourcing and milling video.

Inside The Hudson Company's Pine Plains, NY Mill.

Milling reclaimed material, Pine Plains, NY.

De-nailing the reclaimed industrial timbers at the Pine Plains, NY Mill.

Milling reclaimed material, Pine Plains, NY.

Reclaimed Heart Pine [Chalk Finish] planks on site at the new Whitney Museum, ready for Install.

Crafting The Whitney Floors | Part 1

In last week’s New York Magazine, journalist Jerry Saltz reviewed the new Whitney Museum of American Art, designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop and Cooper Robertson Architects and praised The Hudson Company’s Reclaimed Heart Pine [Chalk Finish] floors as “perfect.”  

But long before the finished floors were ready for the feet of thousands of artists, art-lovers, and visitors to the new museum, they were the antique timbers of abandoned industrial buildings, destined for the landfill - until they were reclaimed by The Hudson Company.

In order to meet the design specifications of the architects, The Hudson Company custom-milled over 270,000 board feet (the equivalent of 27 tractor trailer loads) of reclaimed, antique Heart Pine sourced from the Phillip Morris factory in Louisville, KY, the Paul G. Mehlin & Sons Piano Company in New York, and the Maidenform Brands Factory in Bayonne, NJ.

In the photos below you can see the Heart Pine timbers as they pass through the steps of being demolished, reclaimed, denailed, kiln dryed, and milled at The Hudson Company mill in Pine Plains, NY. 

Click here to learn more about The Hudson Company's Reclamation Process.

Click here to see photos of the finished Reclaimed Heart Pine [Chalk Finish] floor at the new Whitney Museum of American Art.

Demolition of Phillip Morris Factory, Louisville, KY.

Demolition of Phillip Morris Factory, Louisville, KY.

Raw Material, at The Hudson Company Mill, Pine Plains, NY.

De-nailed raw material, ready for milling at The Hudson Company Mill, Pine Plains, NY.

Timbers ready for the kiln-drying process, Pine Plains, NY.

Kiln-dryed timbers, ready to be custom milled for The Whitney Museum of American Art.