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The INNESS barn at dusk, its doors open and the interior lit, gravel drive and trees in the blue hour

Commercial & hospitalityAccord, NY

INNESS NY Barn

An event barn for INNESS, the hotel and club in Accord, New York: 20,400 board feet of Adirondack white pine, raised in five days of Hudson Valley summer.

A Hudson Valley Dutch barn, built new.

INNESS is a hotel, restaurant, spa, and club in Accord, New York, built around a collection of buildings, gardens, and a nine-hole golf course.

Taavo Somer, its co-founder, wanted the event barn to be the heart of the property: an intimate place for people to come together. He and Post Company designed it as a traditional Dutch barn. The project was already underway when the first timber framer on the job didn’t work out, and a mutual connection passed our name along. We designed the timber frame, cut it in Sylvania, and raised it on site.

The frame follows the barns Dutch settlers built across the Hudson Valley in the 1700s and early 1800s: a wide center aisle between two rows of tall posts, a lower aisle along each side, and heavy anchor beams tying each pair of posts together. The anchor beams pass through the posts on tenons and lock in place with wedges. At INNESS, they’re 14 inches deep.

The anchor beams and sling braces from below, their wedged through-tenons showing at the posts, pendant lights hung between

The frame is Eastern white pine from the Adirondacks, about three hours north of the shop: 360 pieces and 20,400 board feet in all. We test-fit the most complicated joinery in the shop before any of it left for New York.

We raised it in June 2021, over five days of 95-degree Hudson Valley heat, without a crane. Everything went up on a 55-foot telehandler with a 12-foot jib.

On the last day, we talked Taavo into riding up to the peak to top it out with a pine bough, the old topping-out tradition. The fresh pine then stood open to the weather for a few weeks while the rest of the building caught up. By the time the doors opened, it already looked like it had been there for a long time.

INNESS uses the barn for weddings, parties, corporate events, dance nights, and movie nights. Most days it’s a big, plain agricultural building. Then the lights get strung, the florists come in, and the same barn holds a cocktail hour and a reception.

The barn in morning sun, its big doors rolled open and the Catskills framed through the far doorway
Down the center aisle of the finished barn, anchor beams and sling braces overhead, the far doors open to the field
An aisle post with its braces, a vase of wildflowers on a table in the low light
The anchor beams and sling braces from below, their wedged through-tenons showing at the posts, pendant lights hung between
A post, anchor beam, and brace meeting at a pegged joint
The gable end at evening, tree shadows across the siding and the doors open to the view
A framer marking a pine timber in the shop, black and white
Walking the deck under the raised frame on a foggy morning, black and white
An anchor beam’s through-tenon test-fit in the shop, locked with a wedge
The topping-out bough at the peak of the frame, hills and trees beyond
The corner of the barn in evening light, tree shadows on the roof and siding
The barn at the top of the gravel drive, goldenrod and cattails in the foreground
The finished barn at night, string lights overhead and a sound bath underway
A party in the finished barn, greenery hung across the frame and the floor full

Project partners

ClientINNESS NY
ArchitectPost Company and Taavo Somer
General contractorBaxter
EngineeringFire Tower Engineered Timber
PhotographySteven Paneccasio and Settlement Post & Beam
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