Frederic Church’s Olana on the Hudson

Barrymore Laurence Scherer Magazine

“Almost an hour this side of Albany is the Center of the World,” wrote Frederic Edwin Church (1826– 1900) to his friend sculptor Erastus Dow Palmer. He added: “I own it.” Church, preeminent among the Hudson River school painters, was referring to Olana, his magnificent “Persian” style mansion and the surrounding 250 mountaintop acres of landscape he subtly designed.

How modern architecture came to Miami Beach

Shoshana Resnikoff Furniture & Decorative Arts

In 1933 Florida Governor David Sholtz wrote that the states various exhibits at Chicago’s Century of Progress exposition were “but the ‘Show Rooms of the state,'” adding, we further invite you to visit the ‘Play Ground of the Nation.'” The Florida Tropical House, constructed for the Home and Industrial Arts Group section of the exposition and built alongside ten other homes on the shores of Lake Michigan, was one such showroom.

Bringing back Olana

Art, Furniture & Decorative Arts

The fiftieth anniversary of the rescue of Church’s exotic masterpiece  finds it and its spectacular landscape more popular than ever with lovers of art, architecture, and ecology.   View looking south to the Hudson River from the bell tower of the main house at Olana. Andy Wainwright 2004.  Just south of Hudson, New York, a signpost on Route 9G marks the …