Saint-Urbain’s identities for The Henson hotel and its restaurant Matilda are the perfect double act

For Alex Ostroff, Founder & Creative Director of Saint-Urbain, the best part of crafting the identities for The Henson – a luxe hotel in Catskills, New York – and its fine-dining restaurant, Matilda, was working with the minds behind the project. His team essentially worked with two sets of clients – on the one hand, there were renovators Danielle and Ely Franko, who knew exactly what to do when a 19th-century former boarding house run as an Airbnb hit the market. The historic property was lovingly turned into The Henson by the pair and was also fitted with a fine-dining restaurant called Matilda, the brainchild of chefs Jeremiah Stone and Fabian von Hauske Valtierra of the Michelin-starred restaurant Contra (now Bar Contra) and Wildair – both NYC hotspots of resounding fame. Stone and von Hauske Valtierra were Saint-Urbain’s second pair of clients for the project, whom Ostroff had been a fan of “for roughly 10 years, Wildair and Contra being two of my favourite restaurants in New York City,” he says. As the team started laying the foundations for the project, Ostroff had to reach back into his memories to understand what he knew of Catskills – the location being the driving force of the hotel’s identity – and what he had yet to learn. “Like many, my only reference for the Catskills was Dirty Dancing and 1950s Jewish standup comedy history (Borscht Belt), but after a few site visits, I got the picture. It’s a region with an extreme, quiet beauty, that we were tasked with harnessing,” he says. The opportunity that the project presented also inspired Ostroff to look back at the journey that Saint-Urbain has been on. “As an agency, beginning with small restaurant projects in cities like New York and Montreal, this moment really made us feel like we made it as far as hospitality projects go – being entrusted with such a special project in such a historic building and region. And amongst so much client talent.” With all the right people in the right place at the right time, the stage was set for the project. From the very beginning, Ostroff noticed a few things – Stone and von Hauske Valtierra’s food is known for a certain sense of fun and playfulness that had to be mirrored in the identity, but history was equally important. The building that houses The Henson was opened in the 1800s as a boarding house and then became many hotels over the years. “Like the hotel itself, we wanted the brand to transform and unite old design into a new experience,” says Ostroff. “We wanted to pay our respects to the history of the building that has housed so many different people over a hundred years and have a logo that felt like it could have been there when it opened.”