SUPPLIER S HOWCA SE
n 2019, Townsend Leather
celebrated its 50th anniversary.
This year also marked another
milestone for the company with its
expansion into a newly restored building.
This building, which the company has
affectionately nicknamed The Stitch,
is Townsend’s new home for sales,
marketing, accounting, human resources
and management teams, along with a
warehouse of raw materials. The complex
was built in 1900 and formerly served as
the Diana Knitting Mill. It had been
vacant for 16 years before Townsend
purchased the property in late 2017
and undertook a massive renovation.
The company secured a grant to help
with this huge undertaking and the first
major part of the renovation was a new
roof and refitting of windows. As far
as the interior, Townsend salvaged the
wood and local artisans combined the
floorboards with other reclaimed pieces
of leather milling, sewing and knitting
equipment and materials to create
new pieces of furniture.
SOMETHING OLD
“You don’t buy wood from
1900 every day of the
week, so you’ll see here
some of the pieces of
businessjetinteriorsinternational.com
062 JANUARY 2020
In its 50th year of operation, Townsend Leather looks
ahead with expansion into a newly restored building
I
PAST AND FUTURE
“We wanted to make sure we kept the
building looking old,” says Beckett.
“Leather is another common feature of
the décor, integrated in the form of large
and small swatches, samples and photos
of finished pieces our leather has been
turned into, as well as fixtures and pieces
of furniture covered in the material. Even
though the bulk of leather-making still
occurs at our Townsend Avenue location
a few minutes across town, The Stitch is
a showcase of what the company is
capable of producing.”
furniture that we built out of the floors,”
says Tim Beckett, senior vice president
at Townsend Leather and lead on the
renovation. “What we tried to do is bring
in a lot of the old stuff from our mill and
a couple of other mills, but also mix in
with knitting, so you’ll see some sewing
machines around.”
Original wooden beams, brick walls
and wooden floors have been retained,
and Townsend purchased reclaimed
wooden doors where called for to
maintain the architectural aesthetic.
Townsend’s
new facility and
manufacturing site
are both located
in New York
State, USA
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