The Frederic Church Center for Art and Landscape is a new state-of-the-art, sustainable building that welcomes and orients visitors to the Olana New York State Historic Site and Park. The Center presents Church’s vision of Olana as a work of art uniting nature and culture.
Located in Hudson, NY, Olana was the home, studio, farm, and culminating masterpiece of Frederic Edwin Church, the preeminent 19th Century artist of the Hudson River School of landscape painting. Olana is a popular landmark reaching new audiences while stewarding the historic site’s landscape and architectural integrity.
The 4,600 SF mass timber Center deepens the public’s connection to the Hudson Valley and enables this growth with ticketing, display areas, a multipurpose room, café, restrooms, parking, outdoor terraces, and connecting paths.
In the spirit of Church’s commitment to environmental stewardship, the all-electric building is also an exemplar of sustainability. The mass timber construction, with glue-laminated wood columns and beams and cross-laminated timber (CLT) roof panels, is a first for a public building in New York State.
The new Center is the linchpin of Nelson Byrd Woltz’s comprehensive landscape plan for the 250-acre site. As an interpretive threshold to Church’s vision of Olana, the Center’s design orients visitors to the immersive experience of the landscape.
