When local attorney James Yastion went to renovate and restore 3 Academy Street in the Village of New Paltz, he began to peel back layers of local lore and history — all held by original yellow pine floors that lay beneath two tons of terra cotta tile and worn carpet. Once a stately Victorian home built in the late 19th century for Maurice Hasbrouck and his family, the structure was converted into a rooming house, a law office, a women’s dress shop, a craft store, a hot tub rental business and a French-styled restaurant, complete with its own patisserie and charcuterie. The Quilted Giraffe would go on to become one of the most sought after fine-dining establishments among New York City’s culinary crown jewels.
Yastion purchased the building in February of 2023 from fellow attorneys Bruce Blatchly and Jon Simonson, who had run their practice out of 3 Academy for the past two decades. Always having a fondness for beautiful things, the estate, elder-planning and probate attorney wanted to return the building to its original grandeur. As he began to research the architectural history of the building, Yastion also uncovered some of the cultural history that had seeped into the structure itself.
“One of my clients was the former maître d’ for the Quilted Giraffe,” said Yastion. He pointed out where the delivery trucks would come, where the patisserie was located, the now-restored back stairwell that the waiters would use to bring the food up to the second-floor dining area and the small nook at the top of the grand stairway where a classical pianist played Chopin, Debussy, Ravel and Mozart throughout the dinner hours.
“They operated out of a very modest kitchen,” said Yastion, noting how remarkable that was when one understood just how famous the restaurant would become after its relocation. The Manhattan iteration of the Quilted Giraffe received four-star reviews from The New York Times, serving the likes of Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis, Andy Warhol and Henry Kissinger: a destination dining spot for the wealthy and the famous or those who were trying to be both.
Hudson Valley One wanted to learn more about the local origins of the Quilted Giraffe and take a tour down the magical and mythical cul-de-sac of Academy Street in the 1970s, when New Paltz was in the throes of its bohemian heyday. The owners of the restaurant, Susan and Barry Wine, were originally from Milwaukee and lived in New York City in the late 1960s and early 1970s, where Barry was a lawyer and Susan a paralegal on Wall Street. A series of events led them to New Paltz in 1972, where the couple, particularly Barry, fell in love with the small town. “It was a beautiful Saturday in the fall. The leaves were turning colors, the sun was out and this town was incredibly charming,” said Susan (now Ransom).
A mutual friend had suggested that they consider buying a home in New Paltz that they could also use as a law office. “It was just after Woodstock, and we were told that there were tons of hippies and women walking braless, and this was also at a time when New York City was falling apart. Our daughter Winifred was five months old, and we drove down, saw the house and bought it for $23,000.”
According to Susan, the owner, Ethel Elting, who had purchased the home for $4,000 in the 1940s, was so overwhelmed that she had gotten her asking price that she put a new roof on it before they moved in. “We had $7,000 saved for a down payment and we just went for it.”
At one time the Wines owned 12 Chestnut Street, 3 Academy Street and the renovated barn known as the Sanctuary. Among the three clustered properties were a plethora of shops, including the Dressing Room, run by Susan and Claudia Fried; Pretty Crafty, a crafts shop owned by June Polatsek; Magic Dragon, a boutique of handcrafted and painted gifts for children, owned by Linda Babb; as well as a gallery and frame shop that Susan also operated. “I also had Winifred’s Backyard, which was a toy store. It was a time when you could try things and have new ideas without having to spend a lot of money.” This was around the same time that Handmade & More opened nearby, as well as The Bakery, and there was a real revival of artisan crafts as well as the fine arts and a desire to expand the mind as well as the palate.
What began as an idea to “serve some crêpes and quiche for ladies who wanted to lunch and then shop” escalated in an exhilarating and frenetic fashion into a full-fledged restaurant in 1975. The couple enjoyed food and travel, and after they purchased a home on Butterville Road, they fully committed to making a go of a restaurant utilizing newly graduated chefs from the Culinary Institute of America across the Hudson River. Everything about the Quilted Giraffe was authentic, including the homemade breads and croissants, as well as the flowers, tablecloths, linens, farm-fresh ingredients, artisan cheese and even Susan’s commissioned quilted giraffe that she framed herself and that hung inside 3 Academy Street.
“The DePuy Canal House was open Thursday to Sunday, so we decided to do the same thing. He [John Novi, owner of the DePuy Canal House in High Falls] was brilliant and way before his time, but you could wait ten hours to be served there! We wanted to offer fine dining, but with decent service that just didn’t exist in the Hudson Valley at the time.”
Eventually Barry would have to take off his legal robe and put on an apron when one of their chefs did not show up for their shift. “It’s commonly known that Barry wasn’t a chef, but he was curious and wanted to learn. He was great at marketing and doing interviews and we advertised in the local papers. We didn’t have social media. We were hardworking Midwesterners with two young children who studied our craft and tried to make it better every day with a new dish or a new dessert or a new wine pairing.”
Both kids, Winifred and Thatcher, would have their birthday parties at the restaurant and would be watched by their full-time nanny EdieWeber in an apartment next door in the Sanctuary barn. “Winnie and I would play or fall asleep in the apartment until our parents finished with the Quilted Giraffe and could bring us home,” said Thatcher, who is now writing a book on the history of the restaurant. In fact, Susan said that the barn was used “as a bed-and-breakfast for a while — not an official one, but if we knew people were traveling to come to the restaurant and they wanted to stay the night, we had rooms for them in the barn.”
Besides being a fun place to work or dine or both for locals, the restaurant quickly became a destination spot for weekenders from New York City. Both Susan and Thatcher agree that it was a review in New York Magazine “that was pivotal in gaining attention and some mindshare in New York City,” said Thatcher. It was written by Gael Greene, who Susan remembered spending weekends in Woodstock with Mildred Newman and Bernard Berkowitz, “the two shrinks who wrote How to Be Your Own Best Friend. They introduced her to the QG.”
The outdoor seating and the wine-pairing, as well as the patisserie and of course their maître d’, Irwin Rosen, who lived in New Paltz and owned a local kitchen shop, were all ingredients that made the restaurant stand out, as well as the French cuisine with a nod to American fare with the Giraffeburger. “We never had any substantive ambition for a restaurant,” Susan said. “It just sort of happened.”
Happen it did, with the Wines closing up shop in New Paltz and moving their restaurant to Second Avenue at East 50th Street in New York City, and eventually to 550 Madison Avenue, where they stayed until they sold the restaurant in 1992. The Quilted Giraffe received three different four-star reviews from The New York Times, which helped cement their run in the City as much as any famed Broadway show.
After the departure of the Quilted Giraffe, there was a time when a hot tub and swimming pool sales company, Some Like It Hot, operated out of 3 Academy Street. In the 1980s there were actually hot tubs installed in the building that were rented out by the hour. A Hudson Valley One crowdsourcing question on Facebook resulted in at least two dozen memories of teens sneaking into the hot tub place, or people who handed out flyers to get a free hour in the tubs, or even some who worked and had memorabilia from the Some Like It Hot days.
The rentals did cause some ire among neighbors, with an article appearing in Hudson Valley newspapers in 1987 titled “Hot Tubs Not Welcome.” Residents claimed that clients of the Some Like It Hot facilities “partied until 5 a.m. and parked their cars all over the place.” Neighbors like Bruce Blatchly and Mavis Taylor claimed that the hot tub rentals resulted in their street becoming like “pig alley” and a place where drugs and drinking and other “illicit behavior” were becoming all too common. Then-owner Bruce Pollack was proposing to rent two of the hot tubs by the hour and live above the rental business on the second floor of 3 Academy Street.
Various iterations of businesses came and went out of 3 Academy Street, including massage and Reiki therapists, courses that formed the beginning of the Discovery Institute (now on Plains Road) and eventually back into a repository of law and order when Blatchly and Simonson took it over.
Yastion pointed out that the original yellow pine floors had been cut out in four different places to allow hot tubs to be installed. In the basement, where the modest wine cellar used to be housed for the Quilted Giraffe, were various support structures that were just put in ad hoc to support the hot tubs. “I feel like the house can finally breathe!” said Yastion. “It was holding so much weight. The entire structure was sagging.”
The attorney showed HV1 where the original bluestone sidewalk used to run the length of the road to a flyover that went across the railroad tracks. Today there are only a dozen or so bluestone walkway pavers that remain, as well as a picket fence and tall, stately windows that allow a waterfall of natural light to pour into the first floor of the building. The original structure was designed by architect William Beardsley, who Yastion pointed out had also designed the Dutchess County Courthouse on Market Street in downtown Poughkeepsie, as well as dozens of commercial and municipal buildings throughout New York State. The home itself was built in 1894 by Daniel Steen, with the help of Daniel Kniffen and Zach Berrian.
The building is now pristine, featuring chandeliers and balustrades and one entire wall of leatherbound books of New York State legal cases. The main offices are painted in a rich Hague blue from the floor across the high ceilings, giving the space a sense of calm and sobriety while also maintaining an intimacy. There’s a feeling that whatever is discussed in these rooms will stay in these rooms. Wherever you go in 3 Academy Street, there are details worth noting, including lined trim, rosettes, elaborately paned windows and cornices that are either original to the home or were handcrafted to replicate the original work.
Even though he has been practicing law in New Paltz since 2013, Yastion said that he enjoys being right in the heart of the Village, and it has made his commute from Plains Road via the Wallkill Valley Rail Trail much quicker. He said that he studied the old architectural plans to ensure that he restored the building as close to its original form as possible. Restoring old buildings through fine craftsmanship, cabinetmaking and woodworking is something that runs deep in his family lineage, according to Yastion. “I can’t not be in a beautiful place,” he said. “I wanted a refined atmosphere, and to do that I knew it would take some time and cost money; but it’s worth it to do something the right way.”
As he looks at the outside of the house, he points to the unique roof lines, the way the windows are proportioned and even the carved wooden floral designs on the large wooden front door. “It’s just a beautiful building,” he said. If you catch it in a certain light, you can almost hear the piano playing, the wineglasses clinking, the texture of yarn and acrylic paint and linen fabric all dancing in the glow of a framed time — a time when giraffes and dragons played in the yard.
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