As someone who grew up along the Hudson River, I’ve always wanted to visit Olana, the magnificent Victorian-era estate with panoramic views of the river and surrounding mountains. Last May, I got my chance and paid admission for the full walking tour. My high expectations for the building, grounds, and tour were exceeded, but I didn’t leave completely satisfied.
A long, drive winds through the hills, climbing past a farm house and rolling cow pastures, until the towers of a castle out of some Arabian Nights story appear over the tree tops. Without even stepping inside, the house is enchanting to behold. The views in every direction are magnificent.
The rooftop suggests whimsy, but the foundation is solid fieldstone, like a castle fortification. Midway up, colored bricks are woven into the walls creating complicated patterns. The ornate patterns continue in the slate roof of the bell tower that is topped by an iron railing and four actual teapots at each corner. Another cupola could be confused for a minaret. Many of the doors and windows are framed in a pointed arch, reflecting Persian culture.
Before looking inside, we went on a walk.
It was a perfect May day. With blue skies and white, puffy clouds framing our views, our excellent guide took our small group on a tour through a portion of the extensive grounds. We circumnavigated the house, mostly keeping close to the hill’s summit, so the walking paths and stretch of road we followed was not challenging. Along with our guide’s amiable narration, the signage was excellent with great details and color illustrations.
Frederic Edwin Church was an internationally famous landscape painter and a founder of the Hudson River School of painting. In an age without streaming services or silver screens, Church was like the Spielberg of his day, offering gigantic canvases capturing awe-inspiring scenes of magnificent mountains, crashing waterfalls, and delicate golden light. Our guide explained that without color photography or the internet, people would pay for even just a glimpse of his paintings. Church would sometimes place his new works on a theater’s stage, People would buy tickets and line up outside for a peek.
His success enabled him to buy a small farm just south of the town of Hudson, New York. For years, he lived in the cottage in the dell and continued to buy property around him, enlarging his estate. After a trip to the Middle East, Church and his wife were so taken with the Persian aesthetic, they decided to return home and build their dream house in that style. It would crown the top of the hill they lived next to, and it would enjoy panoramic views.
To the north of the home, a sweeping view unfolded over the hills into neighboring Massachusetts. Several chairs assembled from crooked logs were spread out on a mowed lawn to enjoy the scene. More such chairs faced the view west, across the river and to the Catskill Mountains. In the foreground was the Rip Van Winkle bridge with steady traffic. After a stretch of forest, we came out on the valley with the original farmhouse at the bottom, before circling around to see the house from its best approach.
Inside, Olana is crammed to the gills with Church’s artwork (both his own compositions and that of others) along with the treasures he and his wife collected in their journeys. Lucky for modern day visitors, the house and its contents are preserved much in the state they were left. We can see where in Church’s studio his easel stood and the incredible view it looked out upon. We can see how he designed a central room entirely to frame a favorite painting of the ancient site of Petra in Jordan. We can peep into his bathroom, and gaze at the books in his library. The dining room is particularly magnificent. Everywhere, though, how windows are situated and how light travels through the space is the real marvel. Clearly, great thought was put into the mansion’s construction and its orientation in regards to its landscape…
And that’s where my dissatisfaction kicked in.
Online and in their literature, the historic site is billed as “Frederick Church’s Olana.” Until I visited, I’d assumed that this was simple branding at work. The current curators wanted to emphasize the house’s famous inhabitant. Sure, I get it: marketing.
The reason I was interested in visiting Olana, though, was because to build it, Church hired the famous architect, Calvert Vaux. More than an architect of some renown, Vaux already had a distinguished career as the partner of first Andrew Jackson Downing (just downriver in Newburgh, NY) and then Frederick Law Olmsted, designing landscapes for private homes and public parks. When he was hired by Church in 1870, Vaux had been in the profession for twenty years and just a few years into work on Prospect Park in Brooklyn and the Buffalo park system. In the next few years, he would leave Olmsted to devote himself to designing New York City’s Natural History Museum and Metropolitan Museum of Art.
During our walking tour, though, the name of Calvert Vaux came up only once at the beginning, along with a brief mention of his relationship to Olmsted and Central Park. He was framed very much as a hired hand to Church, realizing his vision, rather than acting as a key collaborator. Many details of the house’s design, though, clearly reflect the style and taste of Vaux. The stone foundation, patterned masonry and roof tiles, and the painted detailing are all elements evident in Vaux’s other work, but as Church didn’t build anything else, we can’t find similar evidence for him.
Further, our guide discussed the idea of designing landscapes to appear wild and untamed. He attributed this approach to Church, even though his predecessor and neighbor down river, Andrew Jackson Downing, had become famous a quarter of a century earlier for writing the same thing. Had he not died young, Downing would likely have designed Central Park, and I’d imagine he would have been Church’s first choice. (When I asked, the guide didn’t know Downing or the park Olmsted and Vaux designed that’s named after him in Newburgh, NY.)
As I said at the start, our guide was excellent—friendly, clear, and engaging—but his training was limited.
If Calvert Vaux had been rich enough to commission a work from Frederic Church, it would be dishonest (and kind of outrageous) to say that Vaux had painted it. Claiming Olana is the work of a wealthy oil painter is just as absurd. I know that Church was deeply and passionately involved in his home’s conception, but he had hired a seasoned architect to realize it. As Francis Kowsky writes in his biography of Calvert Vaux, Country, Park, and City, “For all his genius as a painter, Church, I believe, was not up to orchestrating architectural space and outdoor vistas as finely as they are orchestrated here; this was the enduring contribution of Vaux to Olana.”
Certainly, we must celebrate Church for his incredible canvases and contributions to American and world art. Meanwhile, Vaux and Downing demand their due.
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