INSIDE SCOOP
Ice cream king Jon Snyder renovated a modernist Westchester haven for his family
JON Snyder wakes most days around 2 a.m., rising in the dark of his one-bedroom Greenwich Village apartment to act as the invisible hand behind some of the city’s most carefully made desserts.
The 54-year-old founder and owner of New York mini-chain Il Laboratorio del Gelato leaves his snoozing family — husband Evan Greenberg, 38, a former child actor and real estate agent who now runs AfterWork Theater, producing plays for amateur actors; daughter Piper, 4 months, and Charlie, a Yorkie-Shih Tzu, 6 — to tend to his company’s invoices, order ingredients, schedule ice cream production and plot out his delivery truck’s daily route. He accomplishes all this before 7 a.m. each day.
“I probably shouldn’t still be doing all of these things myself,” he says. “I’m a poor delegator.”
But several times a month, the exacting entrepreneur and his family find time to relax, retreating to their second home in Bedford, NY, a modernist marvel of glass, steel and stone.
“It’s like a treehouse. You’re surrounded by woods,” Snyder says. “It’s a real refuge, but only an hour from the city.”
That proximity is key for Snyder. Founded in 2002, Il Laboratorio del Gelato currently supplies more than 300 artisanal flavors to 500 restaurants across the city and serves up scoops to retail customers at its Lower East Side and Greenwich Village shops. Adds Snyder, “When I leave Bedford at 2 in the morning, I can be on the Lower East Side in 45 minutes.”
The silver-haired businessman, who grew up in Riverdale and Ossining, wasn’t familiar with eastern Westchester until he and Greenberg spent a July 2013 weekend at the Bedford Post Inn, a posh eight-room property restored by Richard Gere and now-ex-wife Carey Lowell. Encouraged by low mortgage rates, the couple started house hunting. In February 2014, they moved into their $945,000 home, built in 1979 by John M. Johansen. Johansen was a student of Marcel Breuer’s at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a member of the Harvard Five, a
group of architects who pioneered American midcentury modernism.
“I’ve always been drawn to architecture and design. Not that Johansen’s the most famous guy, but it gives the house provenance, which was exciting. It also made us respect the house, and not renovate too quickly,” says Snyder, noting that he’s been in touch with Johansen’s son, architect Christen Johansen, who designed a two-bedroom addition for the home in 1999.
To be sure, the four-bedroom, 3,400-squarefoot spread had some funky details, including exposed steel ducts and pipes, and a large, curiously positioned bath.
“It was almost a hot tub, totally out in the open off of the kitchen,” Snyder recalls. “It was an odd oval shape and maybe three times the size of what you’d have in a bathroom.”
Greenberg immediately wanted to rip it out, but Snyder, out of respect for the architect, imposed a six-month waiting period before ultimately concurring and embarking on a series of renovations that are still ongoing.
Snyder had owned some apartments as investment properties, but never his own house. The learning curve has been somewhat steep, with lessons on furnace replacement, deck maintenance, and the vagaries of how gunite (a concrete substance often used when building pools) influences the color of swimming pool water.
“I didn’t realize the can of worms I was opening up,” he says. “But I like that kind of thing. When I have a bit of free time, I like mowing the lawn. I like fixing things around the house. It’s relaxing.”
In fact, the house, with its austere beauty and quirky design challenges, seems an ideal place for Snyder, a workaholic who has thoroughly embraced the slightly idiosyncratic layout. Rooms are staggered on different levels and connected by staircases, like a rarefied Jenga puzzle.
“This was the first house we saw, and we fell in love with it immediately,” says Snyder, adding that he and Greenberg forced themselves to see several dozen other homes before buying.
When he’s not working, Snyder loves to be outside. The couple’s first big decision was to create a deck out of Brazilian cumaru wood, which has a rich auburn hue, and to add a hot tub and a 16- by 20-foot pool with black and gray Italian mosaic tiles from Union Square store Country Floors.
“I would have loved to have done the entire pool in mosaics, probably from having spent a lot of time in Italy,” adds Snyder, citing Pompeii as an inspiration, “but it’s so expensive.” As a compromise, the couple installed mosaics around the pool’s perimeter, on its steps and on the 2-inch shelf they added for wateraverse Charlie to dip her paws.
On a vacation the year before building the deck, Synder and Greenberg had been impressed by the black pool at Turks and Caicos’ Amanyara resort.
“We both loved that, but I’m kind of afraid of snakes,” Snyder says. “So we went dark, but you can still see the water and the bottom.”
Snake fears vanquished, the family spends a lot of time outside, cooking steaks — and hot dogs and hamburgers for their nieces and nephews — in their eggshaped Komodo Kamado grill. Adds Snyder, “I can go a bit crazy in researching, and I found the best charcoal grill. It’s made in Indonesia — hand-tiled — and you can get it up to 700 degrees and make a pizza, or go slow and low at 175.”
Not surprisingly for a man who creates gelato flavors like yuzu mint and chocolate bourbon pecan, food is central to Snyder’s sense of home. A year and a half ago, Snyder and Greenberg completely gutted the kitchen, keeping the footprint and the slate floor, but adding custom-made Bilotta cabinets, an L-shaped walnut countertop from a woodworker in nearby Mount Kisco, and Wolf and Sub-Zero appliances. They installed a double oven where the pantry had been, and converted a closet into a pantry flanking the refrigerator.
Another legacy of the original design: “The house is full of sliding glass doors to the outside. They’re everywhere, even where it doesn’t make sense,” Snyder says.
The couple’s contractor suggested converting one into a picture window, installing a custom table and banquette that can seat 12 beneath it.
The U-shaped nook allowed Snyder, a selfproclaimed fan of “whites, blacks and greys” to stretch his aesthetic, adding a bright, floral Marimekko upholstery that the couple found during a trip to Kyoto.
“Did we go overboard? One could argue,” he says. “But we wanted that pop of color.”
The casual sensibility appeals to the couple, and to the large group of family and friends they host for annual Thanksgiving dinners. Their passion for midcentury pieces extends to the bright reading loft, which has a leather recliner and two orange lamps, of unknown provenance, also sourced on Ebay. As elegant as the house is, Snyder and Greenberg, who held their September 2015 wedding there, also leave room for sentimental details. Perched on a bookshelf in the living room is a 1950s stainless steel Carvel Corporation crown, with a single ice cream cone, a relic of the Carvel shop that Snyder’s maternal grandfather built in 1950 in Cortlandt Manor, NY. Snyder worked there every summer starting when he was 9 years old. His family finally tore the Carvel down last summer. Those nostalgic treasures accommodated, Snyder and Greenberg are creating new family memories. They are hoping to have another baby next year, joining Piper in the airy haven. “I hope the house helps Piper have an appreciation for finer things, different things, interesting things. The house is a total refuge, and is about trying to do as little as possible,” says Snyder. “But actually, there’s always something to be done.”