In the very beginning, there were mostly crafts and gift items, “and lots of dried flowers!” recalls Hammertown Barn owner and founder Joan Osofsky, grinning and wincing at the memory of mid-1980s country style. “We had quilting and stenciling workshops, too.” When she opened a shop in the barn next to her house on Route 199 a mile east of downtown Pine Plains, she was looking for a way to help support her family that was consistent with their new rural life. She and her now-ex-husband were both 40 years old, and they had tired of living in suburban New Jersey. “We were seeking a life change,” explains Osofsky, whose husband yearned to work with his brothers at the family’s dairy in Ancramdale, Ronnybrook Farm.
A former school teacher, Osofsky is a self-taught merchandiser and stylist with the soul of a community organizer. “There was no grand vision or plan,” she says of Hammertown’s origins. Her son, Gregg, was in sixth grade, and her daughter, Dana, was in eighth grade, and she knew the family could not live on their share of profits from Ronnybrook (which had not yet started selling milk in glass bottles at the New York City Greenmarkets.)
“I spent $10,000 to fix up the barn—there were still horse stalls in one half—and $5,000 on inventory,” she recalls. “I also ran a bed and breakfast in our house to get our cash flowing.” Soon, Osofsky partnered with a neighbor from Ancramdale, Katherine Martucci, to buy and sell antiques. “Those were the days when I could drive an hour and find enough things to fill a truck,” she says. (After a few years, she bought out Martucci.) “Now, good antiques are so hard to come by.”
Osofsky started going to England and France, bringing back linens, dishes and accessories that would look at home in the old Colonials, Victorians, and farmhouses that more and more city people were buying and renovating as weekend houses. “At the heart of what I do is the love of country life,” says the one-time farmer’s wife as her dogs with their dirty paws jump on her lap and lick her face.
In fact, her pets led her into the upholstered furniture business in 1998. “I had a five-year-old sofa, and the arm was fraying because that is where my dog rested his head,” she says. “I went to Pottery Barn and other stores and could not find appropriately sized slipcovered sofas with good style.” She discovered that the North Carolina-based Mitchell Gold Company made affordable slip-covered furniture that she thought was perfect not only for her home but for her customers’ homes, too. “You had to place a minimum order of $25,000,” she recalls. “I nearly choked when I wrote that check.”
It was a turning point for Hammertown, which was now on a path to becoming a comprehensive lifestyle store. With big pieces of furniture to sell, Osofsky opened a second shop on Warren Street in Hudson in 1999, but she only had a one-year lease and her landlord would not renew it. “Dick Hermans was opening his second Oblong Books in Rhinebeck and he told me the space next door was available, and that’s how we got to Rhinebeck,” she says. “We opened a month after 9/11.” The next summer, she expanded in the other direction by opening a branch in Great Barrington. “All my stores are in such special communities,” she says.
With its chockablock arrangements of ottomans, rugs, pillows, coffee table books, toys, jewelry, candles, glasses, cookware, and gadgets, Hammertown is a dry goods store with a globally inspired, modern-rural flair that has come to typify the region’s aesthetic. “My goal has always been for locals and people just visiting for the weekend to feel comfortable and inspired,” Osofsky says. “I am drawn to things that are beautiful, usable, affordable, soulful. You can always find a $10 gift here, and I think we are the easiest place in the world to buy a baby present.”
You can buy everything you need to restore, renovate, or furnish a home in high-end style, from decorator-favorite furniture brands like Lee Industries right down to the elegant Farrow & Ball wall paint. The selection of rugs spans vintage (Turkish, Moroccan, Oriental) to new (Dash & Albert, Jaipur). There are recycled wool blankets and certified organic cotton bedding, plush Egyptian cotton towels, lighting, tableware, and kitchen gadgets galore.
Osofsky’s son, Gregg, a tech-savvy activist and Stanford graduate, came back home to work with his mother to keep Hammertown vital and relevant into a new era. “Gregg is the one who said we had to build an online community on the Internet,” Osofsky says. “He’s the one who said we could only do e-commerce if we created a niche, curated experience because we cannot compete with the big retailers and catalogs.” Hammertown now has a online retail business in addition to their brick-and-mortar-storefronts.
Both mother and son seem as concerned with quality of life as with the bottom line. “What I want to do here is not married to gross receipts,” says Gregg, who in the late aughts renovated the downstairs of his childhood home next door to the Barn, knocking down walls to create a large open kitchen to host cooking classes, how-to workshops, and salon-style events. He adds, “Hammertown is really about local living.”
Hammertown Locations
Hammertown Barn 3201 Route 199, Pine Plains; (518) 398-7075
Hammertown Rhinebeck 6420 Montgomery Street (in Montgomery Row); (845) 876-1450
Hammertown Great Barrington 15 Bridge Street; (413) 528-7766
