Greene Street Workshop, SoHo

Greene Street Workshop, SoHo is Hannah Hall’s former Manhattan workplace and showroom, and the setting of her first encounter with Owen Michaels. A lofted storefront with a rent she could scarcely believe she could afford, it joined the practical demands of making a living to the intimate work of shaping wood. Within it, a scarred farm table that Hannah kept as her desk—not for sale—becomes the object through which Owen first sees her work closely, and the point at which their lives begin to draw together.

Setting and Use

More than two years before the account’s present, Hannah was living in New York City, roughly three thousand miles from Sausalito, the Northern California town she later called home with Owen and Bailey Michaels. Her earlier life was concentrated in Manhattan, in a small lofted storefront on Greene Street in SoHo. The rent was astronomical, and she never quite believed she could afford it; she nevertheless used the space for both workshop and showroom, making it at once the place where her work was produced and where clients encountered it.

That dual purpose shaped the workshop’s character. It was not simply a retail room displaying finished furniture: the tools and work of making remained present alongside the pieces Hannah showed. Her computer, newspapers, and small tools covered much of the farm table she used as a desk, so that its underlying construction was visible only to someone willing to look. The space brought the process and the finished object together, even when everyday work partly obscured the object itself.

Hannah’s Craft and Clientele

Hannah describes woodturning as sculpting in wood rather than clay, a practice she inherited in spirit from her grandfather, an excellent woodturner who largely raised her. She did not expect either woodturning or her later move into furniture-making to support her financially. Her prospects changed after one of her dining tables appeared in Architectural Digest, drawing a devoted niche of downtown New York City residents. Her rustic pieces suited clients who wanted expensive interiors to look as though no great expense had been made.

That following gradually broadened beyond New York City to coastal cities and resort towns, including Los Angeles, Aspen, East Hampton, Park City, and San Francisco. Avett Thompson and his wife, Belle Thompson, were among Hannah’s most loyal clients. Hannah’s pieces furnished every room of their San Francisco town house and their newly built country house in St. Helena, where Belle often retreated alone. The workshop therefore served a clientele whose homes and tastes extended well beyond Greene Street, while remaining the physical place where commissions could be seen and discussed.

The First Meeting

Avett had visited Hannah only a handful of times when he arrived at the workshop with Owen, his employee, during a New York investor meeting. Belle had asked them to check on a rolled-edge side table intended for their bedroom. Avett seemed uncertain what he was meant to inspect, mentioning its appearance beside a bed frame and a ten-thousand-dollar organic mattress. Still on a phone call, he gave the table a brief look and said it seemed fine.

Owen’s response made the visit matter for a different reason. Rather than passing through the showroom as Avett did, he slowly surveyed the workshop and stopped to study its pieces. Hannah noticed the contrast between his shaggy blond hair, sun-darkened skin, and worn Converse sneakers and his formal sports jacket and starched shirt. His attention settled on her favorite piece: a farm table she had made from stiff redwood, chiseled down and finished with gently yellowed corners and rough metal welded to each edge.

The Table as Threshold

The table was not a displayed commission but Hannah’s desk, crowded with her computer, newspapers, and tools. Owen looked closely enough to make out its construction, bent down, ran his fingers along the sharp metal, and held it there. No customer had been the first to notice the table, Hannah reflects, but Owen was the first to bend down and touch its edge as she herself often did. His brief “Ouch” prompted Hannah to point out the hazard of bumping against it in the middle of the night.

After tapping the table as if to say goodbye, Owen walked over to Hannah and stood unusually close. He asked its asking price; she told him that it was the only piece in the showroom not for sale. The exchange establishes the workshop as more than a backdrop: its objects mediate the couple’s first conversation, and the unsaleable table exposes a distinction between Hannah’s work as merchandise and the pieces she keeps as part of her own life. At Greene Street, Owen’s careful looking—not Avett’s quick approval of a costly side table—creates the first connection between them.