A career built between disciplines.
I'm Katie Hammon, founder and creative director of Second House.
I'm a designer, producer, planner, and creative operator whose career has moved between music, the arts, hospitality, events, economic development, business, and design. I never really set out to build a multidisciplinary career. I just kept following interesting problems, learning how things worked, and finding myself somewhere between the creative idea and figuring out how to make it real.
Second House brings creative direction, production, hospitality, and logistical thinking together to turn ambitious ideas into experiences people can actually step inside.
A LITTLE BACKGROUND. I've never been particularly interested in staying in one lane.
I started in music. I was a singer from the very start and eventually found my way into songwriting, performing, touring, and the world of independent music, attending an arts high school and then getting a degree in music industry where I started my band Bear Grass.
That led me into arts and event production, working behind the scenes in performance spaces, supporting artists, managing operations, and learning what it takes to make creative work actually happen.
Eventually, that work expanded into hospitality, large-scale events, economic development, marketing, small business support, and six years leading the Downtown Troy Business Improvement District. I produced hundreds of events, worked alongside businesses and community partners, and learned to think about not just an event or a storefront, but the experience of an entire place.
Then my husband Louis and I bought a farmhouse in upstate New York, and started building what would become The Maples Estate. Suddenly all of those seemingly unrelated parts of my career had somewhere to meet: hospitality, events, business, interiors, landscape, branding, weddings, operations, and experience design.
Second House grew from there.
THE THREAD. Different chapters. A lot of overlap.
HOW I WORK
I like the space between the idea and the answer.
I'm endlessly curious about why something works, why it doesn't, and how it could feel different.
I can spend just as much time thinking about the way someone moves through a room as I do the color on the walls. Or how guests will experience an event, how a restaurant's systems affect its hospitality, how a website helps someone understand a business, or how a tiny design decision changes the feeling of the whole thing.
I'm interested in beauty, but I'm equally interested in function. It should feel as good as it looks.
Understand who will experience it.
Consider how it needs to function.
Design from there.
“Working with Katie was a relief. She ‘got’ exactly what I was looking for and knew exactly how to work with our organization's needs and limitations. I never felt pressured or judged, just supported.”
- Shanna, Oakwood Community Center
HOME BASE. The Maples Estate is where a lot of this came together.
In 2018, my husband Louis and I began transforming an 1855 colonial farmhouse and 12.5-acre property in Schoharie, New York, into The Maples Estate, our extended-weekend wedding venue and, in many ways, my creative laboratory.
I've had the unusual opportunity to think about the property from nearly every angle: interiors, landscape, hospitality, weddings, guest experience, client experience, operations, branding, marketing, and the business itself.
Second House grew out of a desire to take that way of working beyond one property and one kind of project.
You'll likely find me writing, recording or playing music. At a diner, taco spot, or coffee shop, wandering through an antique store or flea market, or making an epic trip with my husband to pick up some ridiculous Facebook Marketplace find we couldn't pass up.
I'm also always up for a renovation or landscape project, and when I'm not making, moving, planting, or dreaming up something new, I'm probably out walking or cuddled up with my dog, Maccabee.
WHEN I'M NOT DOING THAT...
HAVE SOMETHING IN MIND?
Let's make something interesting.
A space · A celebration · An experience · A brand · A business · Or something we haven't thought of yet