The Mansion Called OLANA

August 19, 2019

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Mummy and Daddy did more than just enjoy the WOODSTOCK scene while here in the Hudson Valley… they also found a few historical houses to tour, like OLANA. This fantastic house is located in Greenport, New York… high up on a hill overlooking a beautiful landscape. It was built by the famous landscape artist Frederic Edwin Church and his wife Isabel between 1870 and 1872. It is built in the Victorian style but with definite Persian decorative motifs. The Middle-Eastern elements were carried out in colored brick, slate and ceramic tile and especially stenciling. The cornices of separate sections are each ornamented with multi-colored and gilt stenciling… the patterns designed by Church himself. They loved the Middle East and gave the place the name “OLANA” which is a Middle Eastern name. They spent time in other places but this was their main residence.

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Back in the early years, Church found this lovely spot of land with 126-acres and purchased it for him and his wife. He built a 10-acre pond, an artist’s studio and a small cottage for them to live, which they called, “Cosy Cottage.” He and Isabel had two children… a son in 1862 and a daughter in 1865, and in March of 1865, both of them died from diphtheria… changing their happy lived forever. They traveled with some friends to Jamaica to try and get away from things for 4 months… then went to Vermont to continue their grieving. Late in the year they returned to “Cosy Cottage” to try and start their lives again. In the fall of 1866, their son Frederic Joseph was born, the first of 3 sons and a daughter who would live to adulthood at OLANA.

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In 1867 they bought more land at the top of the hill and began planning their large home for the site. It is a fascinating house to tour and definitely ONE-OF-A-KIND! After the Church’s passed away, their son Louis and his wife moved into the house… when they died, the house and all of the land was passed to a nephew who intended to sell it to developers at a public auction. Someone doing a thesis paper just HAPPENED to stop by the estate to ask a few questions and heard about the sale. He begged them to please hold off for a few days until he could gather a few people together to possibly BUY the estate. Lots of people got involved, a LIFE MAGAZINE article was written, and the estate was saved!!!   It is one of the few intact artist’s home-studio-estate-complexes in the USA today and was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965 and opened to the public in 1966. The interior remains almost as it was during Church’s lifetime, furnished with objects collected during his world travels. It is decorated with stencils all over the walls, around the doors and across the ceilings. There are so many items i  the house that it is difficult to take them all in!!! The tour guide said only HALF of what they actually owned is displayed in the house!!! She said that during Victorian times, it was the “style” to put out EVERYTHING that you owned because this was how to let people know how successful you were… by how much “stuff” you had!

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If you ever find yourself in this area… this is a house you need to see. It is totally different from all of the gilded, marble mansions that we have posted up until now but the artistic designs are something you will want to see.