April 06, 2006
The view from historic Olana in Hudson River Valley
Up on a hill overlooking the Hudson River Valley sits a unique Persian-style villa, Olana, built by painter Frederic Edwin Church with assistance from architect Calvert Vaux.
Sitting atop 250 acres filled with lakes, pastures and hiking trails, the home was built around 1870 and is now a National Historic Landmark. Olana is adorned with all different shapes of windows and Moorish patterns, many created by Church after touring Beirut, Jerusalem and Damascus. As a painter, Church was one of the most famous members of the Hudson River School, considered "the first truly American style of landscape painting."
The inside of the house itself is closed until Memorial Day Weekend, 2007 to allow for the installation of a fire suppression system and climate controls, Linda McLean, Olana's historic site manager, told NewYorkology.
 In the meantime, visitors can still walk around the grounds and the outside of the house or take part in the cultural landscape tours that started earlier this week.
The tours are offered every half hour from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Sundays and on the holiday Mondays. The $3 tour begins at the Visitors Center, proceeds to the piazza of the house and finishes along the carriage drive loop. It covers aspects of the building, the landscape and the Church family. The tour season runs through October 31.
While the house is closed to the public many of its artworks are traveling, currently in New York City at the National Academy Museum through April 30.
Olana is located about two hours north of New York City on Route 9G, about one mile south of the Rip Van Winkle Bridge, map.
Related: Hudson River Valley National Heritage Area
Earlier: Hudson named one of country's coolest small towns
Driving up the Hudson to Columbia County farmland
New Zagat guide covers Westchester, Hudson Valley
Hudson River show opens at N-Y Historical Society
Sipping in 'Napa Valley of the East'
Literary Hudson River Valley
April 6, 2006 10:38 AM in Out of Manhattan, Sightsology, Upper West Side
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