Photo: Netniks, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Frederic Edwin Church was born in Hartford in 1826. At 18 he went to Catskill to study with Thomas Cole, and he became one of the most famous painters in the country.
His huge canvases drew crowds who paid to see them. Niagara, in 1857, and The Heart of the Andes, in 1859, made him a celebrity.
Building Olana
Church bought farmland on a hill south of the city of Hudson, across the river from Cole’s home. After a trip to the Middle East, he designed a house with Persian-style towers, colored brick and stenciled interiors. He called it Olana. Most of the work was done in the 1870s.
He treated the 250 acres around it as a landscape painting, planting trees, building carriage roads and digging a lake to frame views of the Hudson and Catskills.
A state historic site
Church died in 1900. His family kept the house until 1964, when a campaign saved it from being sold off. It is now a New York State Historic Site run with the Olana Partnership.
The house still holds Church’s furniture and art, and the grounds are open to visitors.
