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Chapter 3  - Hudson River Valley

Olana, Greenport, NY

                 

All sites in this chapter
  : Roebling Aqueduct, Highland
  : Lyndhurst, Tarrytown
  : Kykuit, Rockefeller Estate, Tarrytown
  : Philipsburg Manor, Sleepy Hollow
  : Boscobel, Garrison
  : Huguenot Street architecture, New Paltz
  : Frederick Vanderbilt Mansion, Hyde Park
  : Senate House, Kingston
  : Montgomery Place, Annandale-on-Hudson
  : Bard College Performing Arts Center,
      Annandale-on-Hudson
  : Olana, Greenport
 

T The matchless beauty of the Hudson River Valley inspired a school of painting in the 19th century that became known as the Hudson River School. The preëminent painter of the movement was Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), a master of 19th-century landscape painting. He became famous and wealthy for his paintings, including huge panoramic works like Niagara and The Heart of the Andes, for which thousands of people stood in line to pay the admission to see them. Church’s second love was the house, Olana, he built for himself and his family high above the Hudson River with spectacular views of the river and the Catskill Mountains. Church and his wife Isabel took a trip to the Middle East in 1867 where they were enormously impressed with Islamic architecture and decoration. He wanted his new house in America to reflect “Persian architecture,” as he called it. Church had acquired the hilltop in 1867, and after returning from the Middle East, he collaborated with the New York City architect, Calvert Vaux, partner of the great landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, to begin the design and construction of the main house, a Moorish fantasy, from 1870 to 1873. A studio wing, designed by Church on his own, was added between 1888 and 1891. In 1884, he wrote concerning his progress at Olana, “I have made about one and three-quarters miles of roads this season, opening entirely new and beautiful views. I can make more and better landscapes in this way than by tampering with canvas and paint in the studio.” He also doted on the elaborate design of the house. It is a massive limestone structure with three towers, enclosing bells, water reservoir, and painting studio. There are Moorish arches, projecting balconies, bay windows, recessed porches, all covered with roofs of red, blue, and green slate. The house is covered with oriental ornament of colored brick and tile. Inside is a world of exotic, oriental magnificence.