Maybe you saw the spread in Architectural Digest, or read the New York Times profile of Gelman herself, who previously founded the women-only workspace the Wing. But if somehow you missed those things, let me give you a brief rundown: in 2020, Gelman stepped down as CEO of the Wing. In 2021, she founded The Six Bells, a Brooklyn-based homewares store that specializes in folksy country goods—things like patchwork quilts, Grandma Moses needlepoint pillows, beeswax candles, and Heather Taylor Home gingham tablecloths. Amid the cottagecore boom of the pandemic—as well as Gelman’s general start-up savvy—the store became a thing. So much so that she struck a deal with HN Capital Partners, the group behind the Ace Hotel and London’s The Ned, to open her first hospitality project alongside Jeremy Selman, HN Capital’s principal.

Photo: Kate S Jordan

She chose the Hudson Valley because it’s where she grew up going as a kid and currently owns a home; also, she tells me, the region gets 10 times the tourism of Napa but has far fewer hotels to support it. When a 19th-century Federalist inn on the banks of Rosendale’s creek came up for sale, Gelman and her team quickly snapped it up. “We were looking at properties for probably six months,” she says. “It was very Goldilocks—one was great, but it didn’t have this or it didn’t have that. Then we found this. We were like, ‘It’s small, but it could be this amazing jewel box.’”

Gelman rented a U-Haul in Queens and drove down the I-76 to the antique shops of Ohio and West Virginia, packing it to the brim with wooden furniture and oddities like a wrought iron chandelier with farm animals and a pistachio-colored chest. (This feels like a feat when you consider the fact she’s 5’1”.) Then, together with Adam Greco of the interior design firm Greco Deco, she got to work.