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The River Market has become a kind of town hall and gathering place. To announce a Christmas-tree-lighting ceremony last year, notices were tagged to shopping bags. More than a hundred people turned up for carol singing, cookies and hot chocolate. Mr. Veeder has given space downstairs to a young blacksmith, whose wares he will market and sell.
Mark Veeder's at his country home in Sullivan County, shown seated, right, with Michael Schroeder.
This summer, a farmers market was added in front of the store, after Mr. Veeder arranged for the greenhouse at a nearby prison to provide seedlings to local farmers that they could grow to sell at the market.
The revitalization of Barryville came close on the heels of Mr. Veeder’s renovation of his Forestburgh house, a gorgeous old two-story that was about to be torn down when he first saw it by accident in 1992. The three-bedroom house and seven acres of forest had stood unsold for five years, but it was everything Mr. Veeder wanted: a stone house, a pond, a barn, lots of garden and no neighbors.
Unable to afford the $180,000 to buy the house he had his eye on because he had just started EventQuest with his business partner, John Schwartz, Mr. Veeder wrote the owner a detailed financial proposal on how he would pay for it, which the owner accepted. Mr. Veeder and his father did most of the extensive renovations, and he took hardly any time off to explore the countryside. Later, Mr. Schroeder not only got Mr. Veeder out exploring, but he also added his touches to the house, opening the interiors and painting the rooms in brighter colors.
“I’m the master of the interior,” Mr. Schroeder said. “Mark is the master of the exterior.”
MR. Veeder’s weekend metamorphosis into his country self — whether he’s working on Barryville or his house — shocks his friends. Locals upstate can’t picture him in Armani, and city colleagues can’t imagine him wielding a chainsaw or baking a pie. Mr. Veeder ascribes his ease with noncity pursuits to a childhood in the 4-H Club and growing up on a farm outside the Hudson Valley town of Athens, where he had to help with everything.
“As a kid, I used to think, why do I have to go out and cut wood and milk the cows and fix lights when everyone else my age is having fun?” he said. “Little did I realize that it would give me all these abilities I’m using now.”
If he is partial to any of these activities, it’s landscaping and gardening. He has help with lawn and garden maintenance, but he designs and plants all the gardens himself. When he walks around the property today, he points not to the large sections he has landscaped but to specific plants that he loves: a Chinese may apple, a variegated aralia, a golden metasequoia. Mr. Veeder makes them seem like little surprises in the greater landscape — a bit like Barryville.
“People look at the overall,” he said, “but for me what’s special is the detail.”
