Exploring Olana State Historic Site - Transforming Landscape Art into Vision | Hudson, NY

When visiting the Catskills & Hudson, NY during the final best week peak Fall foliage, let's explore arguably the best landscape artist's home complex of the 19th century, Frederic Edwin Church's Olana State Historic Site. Church being a landscaper and artist, developed this 250-acre property to create the mansion & art studio, carriage house and farm complex to grow cash crops and raise livestock. He also changed the swampy terrain into a lake.

Highlights:
0:00 Intro
0:22 Frederic Church Center for Art & Landscape (Visitor Center) (2024)
4:50 Historic Houses: Main Residence (1872) & More
27:09 Farm Complex
41:38 Cosy Cottage (1861)
46:28 Closing

Filmed: Oct. 28, 2025

From Wikipedia:
Olana State Historic Site is a historic house museum and landscape in Greenport, New York, near the city of Hudson. The estate was home to Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900), one of the major figures in the Hudson River School of landscape painting. The centerpiece of Olana is an eclectic villa which overlooks parkland and a working farm designed by the artist. The residence has a wide view of the Hudson River Valley, the Catskill Mountains and the Taconic Range. Church and his wife Isabel (1836–1899) named their estate after a fortress-treasure house in ancient Greater Persia (modern-day Armenia), which also overlooked a river valley.

Olana is one of the few intact artists' home-, studio- and estate-complexes in the United States; it was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965. The house is also a prime example of Orientalist architecture. It is owned and operated by the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, and is also supported by The Olana Partnership, a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. The main building is an architectural masterpiece designed by Frederic Church in consultation with the architect Calvert Vaux. The stone, brick, and polychrome-stenciled villa is a mixture of Victorian, Persian and Moorish styles. The interior remains much as it was during Church's lifetime, exotically furnished and decorated with objects from his global travels, and with some 40 paintings by Church and his friends. The house is intricately stenciled inside and out; Church designed the stencils based on his travels in the Middle East. The house contains Church's last studio, built as an addition from 1888 to 1890.