After Hurricane Sandy, New York City was littered with thousands of downed trees. Hundreds of those ended up at RE-CO BKLYN, a Brooklyn-based sawmill that was operating out of a small lot in Williamsburg. The company—run by Roger Benton and Dan Richfield—collects trees from landscapers, the Parks Department, and landfills, and turns many of them into high-end furniture.

RE-CO BKLYN started in 2009, as a furniture maker that used only reclaimed materials. Since then, it has grown substantially, moving into an old warehouse and purchasing an eighteen-thousand-dollar mill that can handle slabs of wood up to sixty-one inches long. All told, the company now makes as many as four thousand board feet of lumber a year. Levelling and selling those slabs accounts for more than half of the company’s revenue, but Benton and Richfield also turn some of the slabs and turn them into tables, benches, and chairs.

Although some customers come to them seeking rare varieties of wood, Richfield and Benton have based their business on milling trees common to the Northeast, like Red Oak. For them, the appeal of wood comes from finding interesting shapes and patterns in the trees that grow in New York. By “milling these trees and making them into furniture,” Richfield says, “we’re able to preserve that character and put it on display for lots of people to see and enjoy for decades.”