Site #2 Olana State Historic Site

Introduction by Kevin J. Avery, Senior Research Scholar, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Almost an hour this side of Albany is the Center of the world—I own it."  The boaster was Frederic Edwin Church, perhaps the most renowned of second-generation Hudson River School painters, and the "Center of the world" was the summit of the Sienghenburgh, in Hudson, New York, which became the site of his exotic home, Olana.  Well before he designed and built the spectacle of his house, Church had fixed on the spectacle from the hill.  It embraced the Hudson River and its valley, overlooking, to the west, the Catskill home of his late teacher, the Hudson River School founder, Thomas Cole, and the indelible Catskill Mountain range beyond.  There Cole and he had rambled and sketched together in Church's youth as a landscape painter.  Though he would eventually travel the world over and make vast paintings of South American volcanoes and cloud forests, northern icebergs and auroras, and the ancient cities of the Orient, Church returned again and again, in every season, to the view southwest of his estate—especially when he began to build and, with his family, live in his castle.  Seen from the vicinity of the house's south entrance (called the "Ombra"), the Hudson River broadens into a "lake" (which Church opted visually to repeat, in digging the pond at the foot of his hill) and the Catskill foothills taper off into the Shawangunk Mountains beyond.  Despite the small size of Church's oil sketches and studies of the view from Olana, they remain among the most memorable images in his work.

Plan Your Trip

Contact
Visit their Website
518.751.0344

Admissions
Admissions $10-40 per person Visitors age 16 and under are FREE for select tours

Parking
Yes

Restroom
Yes

Accessibility
Somewhat Accessible 
Meets few ADA standards and has significant barriers. Most visitors with disabilities will need assistance.

Hours
Hours vary by season: olana.org/plan-your-visit/