- Olana -
Home of the artist Frederic Edwin Church
Hudson, New York
This remarkable structure was designed and built by the most renowned member of the Hudson River School of American landscape painters, Frederic Edwin Church. Contrary to the stereotype of the "starving artist," Church's talent and energy were a source of boundless wealth in his own time, providing him with the financial resources to construct and maintain this very costly dream home.
Church purchased the lower part of the property in 1860, where he and his wife lived in a temporary cottage until they could acquire an additional 18 acres at the top of this hill, with a commanding view of the Hudson River and the Catskill Mountains beyond. Work on the main house commenced shortly thereafter with the help of an architect, Calvert Vaux. By 1872, Church and his family had moved into the building, although the artist continued to decorate, expand and improve his house throughout most of his life. By 1891, it was essentially complete. The result was a weirdly magnificent castle inspired by the Church family's travels in the Middle-East. Although his concept was largely informed by Persian architecture, Church admitted that he was mostly making it up as he went along, borrowing and adapting design ideas from any source that caught his eye.
The building is breathtakingly well preserved. To this day, it remains largely unchanged in every detail, and still contains the original furnishing and possessions of the Church family, who travelled extensively and collected art, furniture, rugs, tapestries, sculpture, and a huge variety of other artifacts from around the world - the house ultimately became a personal museum display of these thousands of objects of interest. Appropriately, the name Olana was apparently inspired by a treasure-house from Persian legend.
The inexpensive tour of the house is not to be missed - while the exterior of the home is remarkable, the interior is equally amazing in the richness of detail and color that Church applied to it. It also contains much of his own work on display - primarily drawings and sketches from his travels, but also several full-scale studio productions. Illumination of the work is not always ideal, however, since natural light from the windows remains the primary source of light in the home, as was the case in the 19th Century.
The main entry to the home.
The Church property was also a working farm, complete with barns and other structures necessary to farming; most of these buildings still stand, bearing the normal appearance of rural Americana:
The grounds at Olana are extensive and offer numerous pathways for walking through open fields and wooded areas.
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