Olana State Historic Site

Frederic E. Church House (Olana)
U.S. National Register of Historic Places
U.S. National Historic Landmark
The Olana mansion
Location:	Greenport, New York
Nearest city:	Hudson
Coordinates:	42°13′03″N 73°49′07″W / 42.2175°N 73.81861°W / 42.2175; -73.81861
Area:	250 acres (1 km²)
Built/Founded:	1872
Architect:	Calvert Vaux
Architectural style(s):	Persian, Victorian
Governing body:	New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation
Added to NRHP:	October 15, 1966
Designated NHL:	June 22, 1965 [1]
NRHP Reference#:	66000509

Olana State Historic Site, also known as Frederic E. Church House, is located in Columbia County, New York, USA. The site is the former estate of artist Frederic Edwin Church (1826–1900). Olana is located in the south part of the Town of Greenport and is south of Hudson and east of Catskill, New York. Olana means "our church on high" in Arabic.

The main building at Olana is an architectural masterpiece created by Church for himself, his wife, and his four children. Church was one of the most renowned American artists of the Hudson River School of painting. The stone, brick, and polychrome-stenciled villa is a mixture of Victorian and Persian styles.^[2]

A fair portion of the Hudson Valley and Catskill Mountains can be seen from Olana.

The grounds, now more than 250 acres (1 km²), exceed the amount of land that Church purchased for his home. An extensive stretch of the Hudson Valley and the Catskill Mountains can be seen from the property and the house. The picturesque landscape was designed and implemented over a 40-year period by Church, changing the treeless agricultural fields into an artistic landscape featuring gardens, tree-lined drives, a park and a lake.^[3]

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 studios, built as an addition in 1888–1890.

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.^[1][2]

Olana was featured in Bob Vila's A&E Network production, Guide to Historic Homes of America.^[4]

Visiting Olana

Olana is less than an hour's drive south of Albany, New York. The grounds are open during the day throughout the year. Organized tours of the house and studio are available Tuesday through Sunday, and holiday Mondays, from April to October. From November to March, tours are conducted Friday through Sunday. Reservations are recommended, but not required, for groups of fewer than 15 people.

References

Olana mansion inner courtyard

External links

• The Olana Partnership
• Olana (33 photos), at Historic American Buildings Survey
• Olana State Historic Site at NYS Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation
• Summary information about Olana
• Olana information
• American Memory from the Library of Congress
• Olana sample page from a coffee-table book
• Saudi Aramco World, a publication by a major oil corporation dedicated to increasing cross-cultural understanding, published this informative article and gallery of photographs on Olana for its issue in November/December 2005.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Olana State Historic Site

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