“In a time that felt isolating and constricted, this pod created a sanctuary for community.” “The most interesting aspect to me was that this house was entirely filled with people who didn’t really know each other before the pandemic,” Chappe said. “We realized very quickly that 22 people trying to each make their own meal in a small kitchen was not going to work,” said Ryan Voell, who helps manage the inn with his uncle, owner Tim Voell. Once completed, Goupil installed the work on the banks of the Hudson outside the inn, with Voell’s blessing.Īmong the other boarders in this pandemic pod were Jim O’Grady, who spent his time at Innski while working on a nine-episode podcast about 9/11 for the History Channel and WNYC his wife Clara, a publisher at NYU Press New York Public Library rare book and manuscript curator Carolyn Vega her husband, Lapham’s Quarterly editor Kelly Burdick and a number of other Bard College students and recent graduates like Sater.ĭinners at the Suminski Innski became a group effort during the pandemic pod's stay. Bard senior Coco Goupil finished their senior thesis, which included a 14-and-a-half foot drawing of a nun attached to wood, at Suminski Innski. It’s not the only lasting reminder of the pod’s time together. Chappe has shot other “intentional communities,” but this was her longest documentary project.
When Chappe heard of the community forming at the Innski during the pandemic, “I knew it was a story worth sharing since the majority of our pandemic world was living in isolation or in small pods,” she told Times Union: Hudson Valley by email. Her mother stayed at the inn while visiting her in 2012, and she became friends with Voell, his nephew Ryan Voell, who helps manage the inn, and another Bard College student at the time, David Sater. She first became acquainted with the inn when she was a freshman studying photography at Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, a nine-minute drive away. By July of 2020, that number had risen to 22, including several children and a baby, who were sleeping everywhere - in two parlor rooms, a sunroom and a camper parked outside.īard student Emma Johnston, who moved into the Innski in June 2020, told Curbed that she was surprised the guests had all made it through the pandemic without one case of COVID-19.Ĭhappe documented the guests for four months, from February of this year until May. The inn’s 1847 Greek Revival four-bedroom mansion had six guests last March, Curbed reported in a photo essay by Hudson-based photographer Jessica Chappe. Innski’s owner and proprietor Tim Voell relocated to a hotel on the other side of the Hudson when space got too tight last winter. During the pandemic, it became a place of camaraderie and community for an eclectic mix of guests who occupied its lovingly renovated rooms for what ended up being, in many cases, very long stays. It seems fitting that the bed-and-breakfast Suminski Innski in Tivoli is located on Friendship Street. While it was closed to the public, it welcomed 22 guests, nine of whom still reside at the inn.
The Suminski Innski in Tivoli became a refuge for NYCers and Bard College students and grads during the pandemic, and a documentary project for photographer Jessica Chappe.
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