Tracey Ryans surveys a large Edwardian barn at Grasmere Farm in upstate New York that will become the focal point of a retreat he is developing with partners. Ryans enjoys spending time at Grasmere Farm to relax in nature and practice Zen Buddhism. Over the next year, the barn and manor house on the farm will be converted into a retreat for members that will offer housing and communal spaces similar to Ryans' NeueHouse coworking spaces in Manhattan.

1. Tracey Ryans surveys the
Edwardian barn that
spreads over an area of
more than 2,000 square
metres at Grasmere Farm
in upstate New York. The
barn will eventually become
the focal point of a retreat
Ryans is working on with
several partners.

2. TEXT ——— Sam Eichblatt PHOTOGRAPHY ——— Emily Andrews
With a whirlwind life of business ventures in Manhattan and
beyond, no wonder Tracey Ryans likes to take time to “geek
out on nature” in upstate New York. No surprise, either, that
he’s already inviting people to go with him.
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Previous page Ryans outside
the brownstone in Park Slope,
Brooklyn, where he lives with his
wife Cecile Barendsma,
a literary agent.
Top left Grasmere Farm, just
outside the historic township of
Rhinebeck, encompasses more
than 250 hectares of pasture,
forests and rivers, as well as a
manor house, this hangar-sized
stone barn and a collection of
Modernist dwellings. This is
where Ryans comes to "geek out
on nature" and where he is devel-
oping a retreat that will be similar
in membership to NeueHouse,
his "private workspace collec-
tive" in Manhattan.
Left Ryans' brownstone neigh-
bourhood in Park Slope,
Brooklyn.
Right Within Grasmere Farm is
a loosely connected compound
of Modernist buildings created
for the Mensch family, who own
the property, and are longtime
friends of Ryans. Architect and
artist Steve Mensch designed the
pool house. Nearby, Ryans has
a smaller, Zen-accented chalet.

4. "Anyone can build a pretty
building and have nice
furniture, but my job here
primarily is the culture."
My day with Tracey Ryans begins with an
early-morning text saying: “Bring waterproof
shoes. It will be muddy”. The first stop on our itin-
erary, the NeueHouse office in Midtown Manhattan,
however, is anything but pastoral.
Instead, its rolling landscape covers five floors and
4,645 square metres of prime Manhattan real estate,
done out in an industrial-meets-1950s-private-club
style by David Rockwell, New York’s über-architect
and the man behind the award-winning Grand
Central Station renovation.
Inside, staffers from Surface magazine, Island
Records and the Frieze Art Fair rub shoulders with
small firms and “solopreneurs” working on everything
from running apps to organic-food delivery enterprises.
There are many co-working spaces in this startup-
smitten city, but NeueHouse bills itself as a “private
workspace collective”. Its difference lies in the mixture
of members who are vetted by a board beforehand;
the name was inspired by the Bauhaus, and the idea
of a group of people from different disciplines coming
to one building and creating a movement. And they’re
quite likely one of the friendliest, approachably cool
and impeccably dressed group of people this side of
the Hudson.
Ryans is a consultant who specialises in putting
the right people together to facilitate the classic New
York symbiosis of art and commerce. Whether he’s
introducing his accountant to a solopreneur navigat-
ing her first year in business, or luxury brands to art
museums, or working as the executive producer for
Frieze to bring together all the relationships the art
fair needed to set up its New York chapter, he is con-
stantly connecting people. Or, if you use the theme of
this issue, he’s constantly building his own villages
of connections. It was when Ryans lived in New
Zealand for a year that he developed his friendship
with our guest editor, Karen Walker.
Originally a restaurant and hotel entrepreneur
– Ryans co-owns the iconic La Esquina in SoHo and
its Brooklyn outposts, Jamaican-style diner Miss Lily’s
and The Box nightclub, and recently invested in a
green-tea farm in Japan – he is in the process of set-
ting up a members-only retreat in upstate New York,
the next stop on our itinerary. There are also plans
to open NeueHouse in Los Angeles, London, Milan,
Zurich, Miami and Shanghai.
When this man describes his Rolodex as “quite
expansive”, it is probably the understatement of
the year. It’s his connections that the partner and
co-founder of NeueHouse puts at the organisation’s
disposal. “I had all these different relationships that
complemented what they were doing,” he says.
“Anyone can build a pretty building and have nice
furniture, but my job here primarily is the culture.
I’m the minister of foreign affairs.”
At NeueHouse, it’s a case of putting the right
people in the right place. Small businesses are, here
more than anywhere, subject to the most harshly
Darwinian of laws, so it’s apt that Ryans compares
the space to a biosphere or ecosystem.
“We do it the way New York City happens,” he
says. “If there’s a monoculture of cool fashion people,
one disease, and they’re all dead. We also didn’t want
it to be a tech tenement with a bunch of kids playing
hackey sack and sleeping on couches. If it’s all tech
companies and there’s a tech bubble, our company is
going out of business. We wanted the diversity that
would keep it healthy and interesting.”
Another sign of its forward-thinking business
ideals is that women run 50 percent of NeueHouse’s
resident companies, a deliberate move on Ryans’
part. They include Cathie Black (ex-president and
chair of Hearst Magazines), former AOL marketing
chief Jolie Hunt, and Alexandra Kerry (daughter of US
Secretary of State John Kerry), who runs film company
Locomotive. Or as Ryans puts it: “We have some very
strong, beautiful, bad-ass women here.”
Some 160 kilometres upstate, a different-but-
similar community is taking shape just outside
Rhinebeck, a historic small town on the banks of the
Hudson River. This is, finally, where the mud comes
in. Grasmere Farm is a sharp contrast to downtown
Manhattan and Ryans’ brownstone in Brooklyn’s Park
Slope. Owned by the family of Ryans’ college friend
Jon Mensch, the heart of the 252-hectare estate of
open pastures, forest and rivers is a 19th-century
manor house and a soaring 17th-century stone barn
with the dimensions of an aircraft hangar.
Around the corner (or across some fallow fields, if
you’ve remembered the waterproof footwear), there’s
a loosely connected family compound of Modernist
buildings where Ryans comes to “geek out on nature”
and develop his practice of Soto Zen Buddhism, a
spiritual model that focuses on living mindfully and in
the moment – and which, no doubt, helps him remain
affable and centred in his crazy whirl of social and
business interests.
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These two compounds, too, are based around
the idea of social connection. Jon’s father, architect
and artist Steve Mensch, was responsible for the
elegant, back-to-nature design of the pool house,
a communa­l lounge with glass doors that can be
opened up or shuttered depending on the weather.
He also designed the smaller, Zen-accented chalet
that Ryans stays in nearby.
Fifteen minutes' walk away via a forest and
a suspension bridge are other houses designed
by Steve Mensch for his children, including the
Waterfall House, a stunning four-storey tour de force
built onto the edge of a dam across the Landsman
Kill (“kill” is old Dutch for “river”). Over the next
year, the manor house (currently rented out, which
is why its interior isn’t shown in our photographs)
and barn at Grasmere Farm will become the
foundation stone of a retreat that will, in the
same spirit as NeueHouse, welcome members to
minimalist prefab villas and “glamping” options
at various price points. The barn – which last
hosted Chelsea Clinton’s wedding rehearsal – will
be the communal centrepiece around which life
will revolve.
“The common thread in all of this is that it
involves nice, smart people,” says Ryans. “I’ve known
most of the people at NeueHouse for more than 10
years, and everything I do – from personal rela-
tionships to my networks – comes from a place of
authentic appreciation for the beauty of simplicity
and sincere relationships with people. It’s my ability
to not accept anything less that has made it that.”
Wooden walkways and a suspension bridge lead
through a forest on the expansive Grasmere Farm.

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"Everything I do comes
from a place of authentic
appreciation for the beauty
of simplicity and sincere
relationships with people."
Above Ryans at home in
Brooklyn where he works on a
mahogany table that was a gift
from Kim Gordon and Thurston
Moore of Sonic Youth.
Top left The manor house at
Grasmere Farm was built in 1774
by General Richard Montgomery
and his wife Janet Livingston.
Currently rented out, it will even-
tually become an integral part of
the retreat.
Left Waterfall House, designed
by Steve Mensch for members of
his family, is a modernist pavilion
built at the edge of a dam.

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Left The gallery floor at
NeueHouse was once an auction
house and includes its original
terracotta-tile walls. The artwork
is of Ryans' favourite athlete, the
Brazilian mixed martial artist
Anderson Silva. A photograph of
Franz Kafka is on the end wall.
Below The top floor of the four-
storey waterfall house in
Rhinebeck gives the impression
of a ryokan, the traditional
Japanese inn. Ryokan-style
sliding doors lead to a terrace
overlooking Landsman Kill
waterfall.

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A series of wooden walkways
connect the villas at Grasmere
Farm. "The common thread of all
this is that it involves nice, smart
people," Ryans says of the devel-
opment of the farm and his other
ventures.

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Right Ryans' goddaughter Libby
Mensch plays with her nephew in
the pool at Grasmere Farm.
Far right As well as a leafy out-
look, this bedroom takes in a
view of the pool house.
Below The artwork above the
fireplace in Ryans' Brooklyn
bedroom is by Cecile Chong.
The self-described "minister
of foreign affairs" for his
well-connected community
of talent is building another
community in this rural idyll.

9. KAREN WALKER Your new project looks like
heaven. What drew you to Rhinebeck?
TRACEY RYANS I met Jon Mensch when I was about 20.
We became fast friends. He bought the property years
ago and asked me to help him develop it into what will
be Grasmere Farm.
You always seem to know everyone in the
room. Are you sure your Rhinebeck venture's
not going to be a cult with you as the charis-
matic leader? I wish for it to be a melting pot of kind
people: a mirror image of the Utopian NY I live in.
I love the concept of NeueHouse. By creating
a space for like-minded people you've almost
built a tiny village on East 25th Street. What
have you enjoyed most about seeing it come
together? Seeing solopreneurs collaborating in
authentic organic fashion, former CEOs of Fortune 100
companies starting consulting firms and taking the
time to advise younger startups through true altruism.
Watching 200 members cheering for the US during
the World Cup in our theatre. Witnessing the inventor
of the steel drum host a talk with a string theorist to
celebrate the 20th anniversary of Wu Tang Clan.
Park Slope's your other village. You once
described yourself as Dr Huxtable, in your
brownstone, sans the wacky sweaters. What's
the best thing about living in a Park Slope
brownstone? Brownstones have a likeness to the
Kasbah: unified exteriors, phantasmagorical interiors
with winding stairways and beautiful views of the
Manhattan skyline. Strolling up our tree-canopied
street with my wife Cecile to Prospect Park. The his-
tory of my heroes living in our part of Brooklyn ranging
from Walt Whitman to Ol' Dirty Bastard. I almost
opened a coffee shop called Ol' Dirty Whitman!
Tracey Ryans splits his precious time between several villages.
DESIGN NOTEBOOK
Ryans and his goddaughters Claire and Libby take an
afternoon walk along one of the suspension bridges over
Landsman Kill, which leads to Waterfall House.
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