There is an immense amount of wood that is overlooked in the US, and that was part of our mission. But the other part is storytelling, and tying people back to where they are with the furniture that they have.
Nearly every time a tree falls down in a storm or is removed to clear space for a building, it goes to the dump. These “urban forests” have the potential to replace a third of the wood used in the United States, a concept that Zeb and Ted Esselstyn are bringing to the forefront with their Higganum, Conn. based small business, City Bench. Together the two take a portion of the trees removed from the nearby city of New Haven, mill them, and turn them into furniture. Each piece that City Bench creates is one of a kind and tells a story, honoring the tree it came from and connecting the owner to the place it originated. In a sense, it’s furniture with roots.
The Esselstyns were fortunate in that Connecticut is a place where towns strongly value their trees and their history – each town even has a tree warden. They were able to make a deal with the city of New Haven so that every time trees are removed, a portion of them goes to City Bench. The city even provided them with a space to mill, because they believe so strongly in what the brothers are doing.
For their part, the Esselstyns have done a great deal to give back to their community, providing their handmade benches, tables, and more to local businesses and larger clients like Yale University and Connecticut-based Newman’s Own. They are also working on developing a curriculum so that students can come in and learn about urban forests, re-use, and building practices.
The Esselstyns are not the first or only ones to use urban forests this way, but the challenging aspects of the process have kept commercial mills from adapting so far. Urban wood tends to have metal in it from people putting up signs or cables, and the metal ruins saw blades. For City Bench, who uses a portable, less expensive mill for their one-off projects, this isn’t as big of an issue.
In the future, though, they hope that the use of urban wood will become mainstream, and are considering the possibility of expanding their business to other cities. “What we want to do is project the use of urban lumber out to a larger audience. We like to think the whole idea of local food will become local wood.”
Photos by Shaul Schwarz