Olana: Home of Frederick Edwin Church

Olana covers native woodlands, lush fields, and more than five miles of carriage roads, with a backdrop of the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains. The main house atop a steep ridge has towers that dominate the skyline. (Courtesy of Peter Aaron Photographer)

Olana overlooks a lush 250-acre landscape along the Hudson River in Greenport, located in Upstate New York. Frederick Edwin Church (1826–1900), an affluent 19th-century artist associated with the Hudson River School of art, designed and lived in the home, which was also his studio. The home mixes elements of Victorian architecture and Middle Eastern decorative motifs. The home was built between 1870 and 1872.

To realize his vision for the distinct main structure, Church added architectural design to his artistic acumen with advice from architect Calvert Vaux (1824–1895), an English American architect and landscape designer best known as the co-designer with Frederick Law Olmsted on New York City’s Central Park.

Much of Church’s inspiration was motivated by an 18-month tour of Europe and the Middle East that he took with his wife, Isabel. The house has been labeled architecturally as styles ascribed as “Persian-Moorish-Eclectic” to “Italianate-Eastern-Picturesque.” The home has numerous idiosyncratic features, such as patterns of colored bricks, Chinese tiles forming a balustrade railing, towers, and varied roof pitches. The Olana State Historic Site preserves the house, its contents, other buildings, and the woodlands and grasslands.

On the exterior are noticeable Middle Eastern motifs and stenciling, a dominant technique also used throughout the interior. The varied polychromy—use of many colors—is achieved with colored bricks, ceramic tiles, stones, and slates, in addition to wood and iron painted in harmonizing hues. Moorish-style pointed arch windows as well as spires, towers, and balconies grace many sides of the house. (Courtesy of Peter Aaron Photographer)

The south façade of the main house exhibits asymmetrical towers, glassless windows, and cornices. While many structures reserve elaborate adornments for the interior, Olana sports a profusion of detailed and artistic Middle Eastern motifs carried out on colored brick, slate, and ceramic tile on its façade. Red and white striped awnings provide shade over windows. (Public Domain)

The Court Hall consists of two sections: the main room and the stair hall. A broad, pointed, stenciled Moorish-style arch supported by pilasters on massive pillars. The interior arch mirrors the main window, which features patterns in the tinted window.  The atrium-style architecture of this centerpiece room is complemented by the elaborate European and Middle Eastern furniture and art collection. (Courtesy of Peter Aaron Photographer)

The Dining Room served as a place to take meals but also as an art gallery space to showcase a collection of European Old Master paintings. Deep-stacked ceiling moldings below the tray ceiling, an inlaid floor, and a stenciled baseboard set off an elaborately crafted piano and an oblong dining table with rattan-backed chairs. (Courtesy of Peter Aaron Photographer)

As with most rooms at Olana, the Sitting Room serves as a showcase space for art and antiques. Church designed this room's inlaid wood fireplace mantle above carved red Tennessee marble. It's replete with stenciling and painted in metallics and pastels. In fact, Church designed many of the stencil patterns for the interior and exterior stenciling. Over the fireplace is Church’s 1874 painting “El Khasne,” which depicts a historic site in present-day Jordan. (Courtesy of Peter Aaron Photographer)

Church’s studio, one of the largest rooms in the house, has a similar pointed arch to the one in the Court Hall. A latticed, Middle East-inspired shade defines the double-height window that provided ideal northern light for Church to paint. The decorative focal point in the room is the elaborately carved teakwood mantel fireplace decorated with hand-painted tiles, depicting a scene referred to as “reclining woman and man in European costume.” (Courtesy of Peter Aaron Photographer)

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