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Frederic Church and other Hudson River School painters as Catalysts
       for the Conservation Movement and their Legacy Today

                          A Talk for the University at Albany Foundation
                        Albany Institute of History and Art, September 2009
                                       By Sara Johns Griffen




View South from Olana
        It is at pivotal occasions like the Quadricentennial of Henry Hudson’s voyage up the
Hudson River of 1609 that allow us to step back to see what lessons can be learned from our past,
to help us find new ways to address current concerns. One of the issues that many of us care
deeply about is how we can find a middle ground between the need for progress and development
and the interest in preserving a defining characteristic of what makes America America -- - the
extraordinary diversity of its scenery. This issue is not new – in fact, it has strong roots right here
in the Hudson Valley, in the form of the Hudson River School painters. I would like to think that
by understanding how they approached this issue, we may find fresh perspectives and perhaps
inspiration on dealing with the challenge.


         To understand what caused the formation of America’s first official art movement, the
Hudson River School, one needs to look back to colonial times. Early colonists had a very limited
interest in the landscape as an art form. The American landscape, which was primarily wilderness
at the time, was seen as a place of darkness and chaos, and the focus was on taming that
wilderness. And taming they did – cultivating fields, cutting trees for firewood and houses, and
otherwise putting their imprint of civilization on the land.




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During the 18th century, to the extent that there was art collected, it was primarily portraiture,
or scenes of historical interest, with occasional landscape scenes portrayed in the background. If
there were any landscape paintings collected, they were more likely to be by European artists,
displaying pastoral scenes in the tradition of Claude Lorraine. It should also be remembered that
the collecting world was quite small in the 17th and 18th centuries, as industry, and therefore
enough wealth to actually collect, was only beginning. Those few who were wealthy tended to
display their wealth through decorative arts – wallpaper, sconces, etc. rather than paintings.


        By the early 19th century, cities and industry were growing, gradually displacing the
wilderness. With the steamboat invented in 1807, the Erie Canal opening in 1825, and the
railroads starting to expand in the 1830’s, trade increased dramatically, bringing significant
changes to the landscape. While there was great optimism about this exciting growth, there was
also a growing nostalgia for undisturbed land. It was during this time that a group of artists, led
by Thomas Cole, began to celebrate the beauty of the American wilderness.


         Thomas Cole (1801 – 1848), who came from Lancashire, England, moved to New York
and began travelling up the Hudson River, through the Palisades and Highlands, eventually
making his way up to the Catskills. His notes reveal a fascination with the beauty of the
scenery…”Mists were resting on the vale of the Hudson like drifted snow,..” He was greatly
impressed by Kaaterskill Falls, with its “savage and silent grandeur”.


        He would make numerous sketches in situ and then
travel back to his studio in NY and prepare the works in oil.
In 1825, his works were discovered by three popular artists,
John Trumbell, William Dunlap and Asher Durand. From
there, Cole’s fame quickly spread, encouraging many other
artists to flock to the Hudson Valley to paint, and ultimately
launching the movement known as the Hudson River
School of painting. (Cole, Lake with Dead Trees, 1825).


        There were clear indications that Cole’s and others’ celebration of the distinctly
American scenery struck a chord in the American public. Exhibits of these paintings in New
York at the Artists Union between 1839 and 1851 drew up to 250,000 people a year and this was
when New York’s population was barely 500,000. Before long, the public desired to experience



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these wilderness areas first hand, resulting in a booming tourist industry. By 1850 there were
about 150 steamboats used for commerce and leisure, carrying a million passengers up and down
the Hudson River.


        Cole’s and other artists’ work had their corollary in the writings of the group known as
the Knickerbockers – including Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen
Bryant. Influenced by the same romantic concepts as the artists, the Knickerbockers were able to
express the moral and spiritual significance of nature that the artists were attempting to convey on
canvas. The work of the Knickerbockers about American scenery and landscape in the 1830s and
40s helped pave the way for growing acceptance of the Hudson River School painters.


        Looking a little more closely at Cole’s work reveals that he not only wanted to celebrate
the wilderness but had important messages to share. Cole’s approach to landscape painting, as
professor David Schuyler points out, aspired to what he called “a higher style of landscape art”.
Interested in composition, he chose to idealize the landscape rather than record it directly. At
times, when natural scenery had already been affected by human intervention, he often chose to
paint it as he imagined before “culture” intervened.


        Given Cole’s strong writing on the issue, it is clear
that the sentiment behind his idealized paintings had a good
deal to do with his concern about Americans’ lack of
sensitivity to the beauty and uniqueness of the American
scenery and that it was falling prey to economic
development. He showed his great concern over the signs of
progress by painting out the railroad or other evidence of
industry or by idealizing the wilderness. In the painting
Katterskill Falls, 1826, (right) scholars know, by comparing
the sketch to the finished work, that in the latter, he took out
the refreshment pavilion and sawmill. Also View from
Mount Holyoke, Northhampton, MA omitted the refreshment pavilion.


        Another painting shows Cole’s willingness to enhance a scene to make it more visually
appealing. View of Schroon Mountain, Essex Co, NY after a Storm (1838) he chose to include a
small pond that could not have actually been there. It was as if at this point, he had studied the



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elements of nature so deeply that he could manipulate them in a manner that made sense in his
aesthetic judgment.


        Cole increasingly felt it imperative to warn Americans that they were in danger of
befalling the same fate as the Old World. One of his most famous painting series, Course of
Empire, is thought by many historians to be symbolic of his fears for the New World, with the
gradual metamorphosis from wilderness to civilization, to destruction, and finally to decay (show
the Course of Empire series). Scholars believe that they demonstrated how concerned Cole was
about how economic development was transforming the natural world. In his writings, he decried
the massive felling of trees that had occurred over the past 2 centuries, stating “my heart was
wounded by each savage blow (of the axe)”.


        It seems clear, that, between Cole’s paintings themselves, which awakened Americans’
sense of pride for its own country’s scenery, as well as his expressed concern for the loss of
wilderness are clear precursors to later conservation and environmental movements.


        Moving forward to the second generation of the Hudson River School, roughly the 1850s
and 60s, painters like Frederic Church, John Kensett, and Sanford Robertson Gifford carried the
tradition to new heights, creating vast, awe inspiring scenes of both America and abroad. Their
continued reverence for America’s natural beauty, but also concern about the continuing
degradation of the wilderness, was shared by contemporary American writers such as Henry
David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Francis Perkins Marsh.


        Frederic Edwin Church was one of Cole’s
only pupils. Born in Hartford in 1826, he was
invited to study with Cole at his home in Catskill
at the age of 18. They hiked all over the Catskills,
sketching and bringing back their paintings to
finish them in the studio. As National Gallery
Deputy Director and Chief Curator Frank Kelly
states, “His earliest drawings revealed a level of competence that equaled or even surpassed his
master." After two years of study, Church moved to New York City where he quickly came to
prominence, ultimately rising to fame as the nation’s greatest landscape painter of the 1840s and
50s. His paintings from South America, (see Cotopaxi, 1862), the Middle East and the Icebergs



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in Newfoundland, not to mention the Hudson River Valley, drew enormous crowds, with people
lining up around the blocks and paying 25 cents to see just one image like Heart of the Andes.


         Church’s earlier works of the late 40s
and early 50’s demonstrate a belief that there
can be balance between development and
preservation of the landscape. Frank Kelly
points out several examples in his book FEC
and the National Landscape), including his
1847 work View Near Stockbridge (right), and
West Rock, New Haven (1849), showing a
pastoral setting where humankind had settled
nicely into American nature – adapting it,
perhaps, but not destroying it. Also, few
painters of his day portrayed as many sawmills
as Church did. Sawmills were a symbol of both
progress and of degradation (flooding, erosion
of soil from felling of trees, pollution of the
waterways etc.), and Church found many
opportunities to paint them, such as Rutland
Falls, Vermont, 1848) and New England Landscape (Evening After a Storm) c. 1849. However,
by the late 1850’s he was moving more and more towards bemoaning the loss of America’s
unspoiled nature. In his painting shown above, Twilight in the Wilderness (1860), critics believe
its celebration of pristine wilderness may be symbolic of Church’s ambivalence over progress,
and in fact may be a plea for preservation of the wilderness.


        When the subject of the dichotomy between progress (industrial development) versus
preservation comes up, it is important to point out that the collectors of paintings by Cole and
Church were often the very ones who were contributing to the destruction of the wilderness to
make way for railroads and industry. As author Simon Schama pointed out, “Patrons Lumen Reed
and Daniel Wadsworth prided themselves on their taste but they were merchants whose many
profitable ventures were obliterating the woodlands they displayed on their walls.”




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What makes Frederic Church so unique as we discuss how the Hudson River School
painters addressed these controversial issues of the time is that he chose to express his ideas
through more than painting but in a 3 dimensional form – the creation of his home – Olana, and
through his activism.


        In 1860, Church bought property in Greenport, directly across from his mentor’s home,
Cedar Grove, in Catskill. Over the next 10 years, he acquired more property until he finally
bought the top of the hill and began to build his ultimate home. The property had been a hard-
scrabble farm, and Church devoted much time to transforming that land, modeling it on the
natural style of landscape gardening practiced by European and American professional landscape
gardeners of the early to mid- 19th century.


        The natural style was a romantic form of landscape gardening that incorporated
eighteenth century aesthetic theories on the Beautiful and the Picturesque and called for
gardening to be an art form that followed the lead of nature. (Masters) In America, Andrew
Jackson Downing was the leading practitioner of the field, and had a significant impact on
landscape design throughout the Hudson Valley as well as the entire country.


        At Olana, Church devoted himself to creating a primarily Picturesque landscape, as
defined by Downing. Picturesque design produced “outlines of a certain spirited irregularity,
surfaces, comparatively abrupt and broken, and growth of a somewhat wild and bold character”.
This contrasts with the Beautiful mode of landscape design which shows little interest in wild
nature. Instead, the Beautiful engendered “graceful outlines of highly cultivated forms”.


        Church used various
techniques to achieve this
Picturesque design – planting
thousands of trees, creating
areas of shrubbery and grass,
and framing views throughout
the property using a system of
five miles of carriage drives.
He created a lake out of
swampland. He built up the



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farm area in the “ferme ornee” tradition – bringing in an aesthetic sensibility into the placement
of the various farming elements – farm buildings, orchards, vegetable gardens etc. When he built
his Persian-inspired house just below the highest point on the property, he was doing it for
aesthetic and practical reasons -- creating a backdrop for the house, as well as protecting the
house from high winds. All of these elements were situated within a background of the
panoramic views of the Catskills, the Taconic Ranges and the Hudson River.


        In essence, Church was creating a three dimensional landscape painting, with the house
and its environs as the foreground, the woodland, parkland and forest as the middle ground, and
the views as the background. As Church himself put it “I can make more and better landscapes in
this way than by tampering with canvas and paint in the studio” (1884). And this is precisely what
A.J. Downing had said in the 1830’s, that a landscape should be planned in much the same
manner as a painting is created, but that it was rare to have someone who was both a landscape
architect and a painter. This is what makes Olana so extraordinary, as it was created by a painter;
and not just any painter, but the most famous painter of his time.


        There are scholars who say that part of what was driving Church’s efforts to create this
landscape was not just on an aesthetic basis but also from a conservationist standpoint. As
Bethany Astrachen describes in her master’s thesis on Church’s Contribution to Wilderness
Preservation, tree planting was called for in mid-nineteenth century by early wilderness
preservationists to save the American landscape, which had lost a great deal of forest in the past
two centuries. Church had two books in his library devoted to the importance of reestablishing
forests, one of which, Man and Nature, published in 1864, was by one of the leaders of the
conservation movement, George Perkins Marsh. Drawing parallels with the demise of the Roman
Empire due to “man’s ignorant disregard of the laws of nature”, Marsh warns that the same could
happen in America. The remedies include draining and irrigation, the building of dams, and the
rebuilding of forests.


        At the same time, a number of articles were published in the mid-century lamenting over
the destruction of America’s forests and the need for preservation through tree planting. Planting
came to be thought of as a moral obligation for all Americans. In this climate of preservation, it
seems reasonable to think that Church could have been influenced by these philosophies. In fact,
Church’s correspondence in the 1860s has as a major theme the planting and nurturing of trees.
Landscape architect Robert Toole confirms that the naturally-wooded areas that Church bought



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were incorporated as “wildernesses” within in the overall scheme of the landscape garden.
Church’s plan was to balance the wild forest area and the pastoral park settings in his landscape
scheme, which is something that Marsh strongly advocated for.


        Church’s active involvement in the preservation movement gives greater evidence that
his own choices in creating his landscape could have had conservationist motives. Through his
work on the saving of Niagara Falls from commercial onslaught and serving on the Central Park
Commission, it is clear that he wanted to make a difference in preserving and creating beautiful
landscapes.


        Church went on several sketching trips to Niagara Falls during the 1850s, resulting in two
major paintings -- Niagara (1857) Corcoran Gallery of Art (see below) and Niagara Falls, from
the American Side (1867) National Gallery of Scotland. At that time, a good deal of the area
surrounding the falls had been stripped of its trees in preparation for commercial establishments.
Frederick Law Olmstead, the leading landscape architect of the day, who led the movement to
make Niagara Falls a State Reservation in 1885, credited Church as the catalyst for his efforts to
preserve the falls. Olmstead writes in 1879: “My attention was first called to the rapidly
approaching ruin of its characteristic scenery by Mr. F.E. Church, about ten years ago. Shortly
afterwards, several gentlemen, frequenters of the Falls, met at my request, to consider this danger.


        As for Church’s involvement in Central Park, the movement to establish parks in
America gained momentum throughout the first part of the 19th century, called for by Andrew
Jackson Downing, who had seen the benefits of such parks in England. After Downing’s death,




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the movement shifted to Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, who had come up with the winning plan for
Central Park, called Greensward, which capitalized on the features of the natural style of
landscape gardening. The concept of Central Park was rooted in the idea that in the midst of
important development of commerce, it was equally important to establish parks, which not only
saved a piece of the land increasingly sought after by developers, but it also supplied to the
“hundreds of thousands of tired workers who have no opportunity to spend their summers in the
country…” a place for respite.


        Church was appointed a commissioner of the New York City Department of Public Parks
in 1871. Olmstead described the importance of Church’s appointment and the contribution a
painter could provide: “There is I think a peculiar propriety and significance in it…we were
anxious on the matter of propriety that the art element should be recognized…”. Church was
responsible for the siting of the Obelisk (known as Cleopatra’s needle). While records are scanty,
there is no doubt that Church worked closely with Olmstead on various aspects of Central Park.


        Thus, not only through his paintings but in his actions Church played an important role in
reflecting the mood of the time – concern over the loss of wilderness, but was also taking direct
steps to put action behind his sentiments as part of the Conservation Movement.


        While Church’s work had
declined in popularity by the late 1860’s,
other painters like Albert Bierstadt and
Thomas Moran found fame and success
travelling west and painting dramatic
vistas. Bierstadt first visited the Rockies
in 1858 and began to paint vast images of
Western scenery, which had broad
popular impact. One painting, Looking
Down Yosemite Valley (1865), (see right), is an example of his uncanny understanding of what
Americans wanted to believe – that there was still untouched wilderness, and a promise of a new
beginning after the Civil War. The writer and preservationist John Muir, Bierstadt’s literary
counterpart, affirmed the idea that the Yosemite Valley could refresh the spirit. His activism
(helped by, one would have to imagine, the public enthusiasm generated by Bierstadt’s hugely




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popular paintings) helped save the Yosemite Valley, first leading to Yosemite’s becoming a state
park in 1864 and later a National Park in 1890.


        In 1870, Thomas Moran
accompanied the first government-
sponsored expedition to Yellowstone.
The drawings and watercolors he
brought back from the trip, such as
Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone
(1872) (see right), helped convince
Congress that Yellowstone should be
preserved. In 1872, Yellowstone
became the world’s first official National Park.


        Closer to home, it is widely recognized that the Conservation Movement led to the
establishment of the Adirondack Forest Preserve in 1885.


        The legacy of the Hudson River School continued through into the 20th century. Even
though the movement itself was out of favor, the momentum created during that period led to
more important conservation measures in the early 20th century – in the Hudson Valley, the
Palisades cliffs, just north of NYC, suffering from relentless quarrying in the 19th century, were
saved in the early 20th century, becoming an Interstate institution in 1900. The Catskill Park was
created in 1904. More broadly, the National Parks Service was established in 1917 and the
Civilian Conservation Corps, a work relief program focused on natural resource conservation,
was founded by FDR in 1933 during the depression.


        In the 40’s through early 60’s, environmental conservation interests seemed to take a
back seat as the country was rebuilding itself after the war, leading to some memorable disasters
such as the smog episode of 1943 in Los Angeles and when the Ohio River caught fire in 1969,
spewing flames five stories high in the air due to pollution. In the 60’s Rachel Carson wrote
Silent Spring, one of the first of her generation to sound the alarm for the environment. But it
was back in the Hudson Valley that one of the great milestones was achieved, paving the way for
the modern environmental movement. In 1963, Con Edison planned to embed the world’s largest
hydro-electrical plant into the face of Storm King Mountain near Cornwall. The 17-year-old case,



                                                                                                     10
which was finally won by the opponents of the plan, set important precedents in environmental
law, including the right of citizens to speak out and initiate lawsuits to protect the environment.
The group formed during that time, Scenic Hudson, is now one of the most respected
environmental organizations in the country.


        Other environmental groups, such as Pete Seeger’s Hudson River Sloop Clearwater,
formed during that time and provided a strong voice to demand greater environmental efforts.


        Interestingly, it was about this time that the Hudson River School began to grow again in
popularity. In fact, it was because of the very few people who knew that the Hudson River
School would be famous again that Olana was saved from being auctioned off for its contents in
1964. By the 70’s, the Hudson River School was being used as part of the clarion call for
preservation – Metropolitan Museum curator John K. Howat’s seminal book The Hudson River
School and its Painters, was published in 1971 (in the middle of the Storm King battle) with all
the proceeds going to Scenic Hudson.


        Another major visual and environmental threat occurred in 1979, when the State Power
Authority advanced a project to build a huge nuclear power plant on riverfront land in Cementon,
directly downriver from Olana, in Greene County. Two immense parabolic cooling towers were
proposed which it was claimed would have emitted enormous amounts of water vapor – whereby
the plumes would have towered thousands of feet in the air, dominating the primary
southwesterly view from Olana and dwarfing the Catskills. This was bitterly opposed by
environmental and citizen groups on ecological as well as economic, health, and social grounds.


        The Carey administration initially supported it. John Dyson, then head of the State
Power Authority, aggressively advocated for it. State Parks Commissioner Orin Lehman would
not permit the agency to testify against it. However, Friends of Olana, the Columbia County
Historical Society and the Hudson River Conservation Society became joint interveners in the
proceeding.


        The issue was also subject to review and permit approval by Federal Energy Regulatory
Commission (FERC). Its staff hired a consultant, Carl Petrich, who spent months studying the
cultural and aesthetic impacts of this plant and focused on the views from the site of the former
Catskill Mountain House, the State Forest Preserve and Olana. He concluded that this was one of



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the most important cultural landscapes in American history and that the proposal would be utterly
destructive to the landscape and should not go forward. This position was adopted by the staff of
FERC – apparently the first time it had recommended against the siting of a nuclear power plant
on ANY grounds. Because it was almost certain that the full Commission would support the
recommendation of the staff, Dyson withdrew the proposal with Governor Carey’s blessing.


        Environmental groups had been opposed to the Hudson River Conservation Society’s
pushing the issue on aesthetic grounds – the community said concentrating on the visual issues
was frivolous and that it would weaken their arguments of ecological, economic, social and health
issues. But in the end, the decision was made on the visual impact – one of the first times in the
U.S. that such an outcome had been based on these grounds. Because the proposal was
withdrawn before a formal FERC ruling, it did not have the chance to become case law and
therefore precedent-setting. Still, the proceedings were critical in helping environmental
organizations know that a case could be won on aesthetic grounds for the preservation of a
historic site’s view. In fact, it laid the groundwork for the New York State Environmental
Quality Review procedures to include potential visual impacts in any environmental review of
new development projects.


        We fast forward to more current times. In 1995, the U.S. Generating Company,
announced its intention to build a $500 million gas-fired power plant on the river in Athens, NY
approximately four miles northwest of Olana. The plant was to withdraw 4.2 million gallons of
water per day. Opponents, including The Olana Partnership, said that the power was not needed
locally, that the giant structure would mar the landscape and that the cooling systems would
threaten water supplies and fish in the area. In the end, due to a negotiated settlement, the plant
was built, but modified significantly, using cleaner combustion technology and a dry cooling
system that would lower the stacks and reduce a number of pollutants and water consumption by
99%.


        In 1998, Saint Lawrence Cement, a
subsidiary of the Swiss firm Holcim,
announced a plan to build a $300 million
cement plant within three miles of Olana.
Its smokestack was to tower more than 600
feet above sea level. It would be the tallest



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structure between Manhattan and Albany, with a plume 6 miles across the state. This proposal
drew the ire of many individuals and groups, with Friends of Hudson, The Hudson Valley
Preservation Coalition, including Scenic Hudson, and The Olana Partnership taking the lead as
groups with full party status. They argued that the plant was greatly out of scale with the small
community of Hudson (population 7,500), that the company’s own information revealed
dangerous levels of air pollution, that it would create only one new job, and that it would mar the
views of one of the region’s most important sites, Olana.


           The dispute raged for six years. In the end, The New York Department of State gave a
negative determination on the plant, arguing that the plant would be inconsistent with eight of the
State’s coastal management policies. The ruling rested on three major findings – the significant
adverse impact on Hudson’s waterfront, on the character of the Hudson Valley, and on Olana and
other historic resources. Among the many references the DOS made to the importance of Olana,
two are particularly poignant: “The Olana property is a designated landscape of extraordinary
importance that recognizes its connection to the landscape beyond its borders" and "Olana’s
viewsheds are among the most dramatic and famous in the Hudson River Valley.”


           There continues to be a strong legacy in protecting the beauty of the Hudson Valley.
There have been great successes, not only in winning disputes over discordant industrial
development projects, but in protecting the land. Environmental organizations like Scenic
Hudson, the Open Space Institute, and New York State, have so far protected thousands of acres
in the Hudson Valley. The Hudson River is cleaner than it has been in a hundred years. Forests
have experienced a remarkable comeback, from 25% forest cover in 1890 to about 62% today.
Agencies within New York State such as the Estuary Program within the Department of
Environmental Conservation have made the preservation of open space and views one of their top
priorities. State Parks has been working tirelessly to improve the existing historic resources
within its jurisdiction, which has been staggering under a deferred maintenance deficit of $650
million.


           There are many State programs that have been created over the past 30 years to
strengthen efforts to preserve open space such as Scenic Areas of Statewide Significance
guidelines and the Coastal Management program of the DEC, which encourages LWRPs (Local
Waterfront Revitalization Plans). The Hudson River Valley Greenway helps communities




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develop strategies for preserving their cultural resources while encouraging compatible economic
development.


           The fact that the Hudson River Valley is now a National Heritage Area and the Hudson
River an American Heritage River is a fitting tribute to all the work we’ve done to protect its
assets.


           There are still major hurdles. New York is a home-rule state, which means that each
community’s local government can decide for itself what kind of zoning, if any, it wants to
impose to guide development. As a result, there is a patchwork of inconsistent development
happening throughout the state.


           It would be great if there were a shared vision for future growth leading to a region-wide
master plan. But how to develop a shared vision when our views can be so different? While
many of us assume that everyone “gets it” in terms of appreciation for the wilderness and
beautiful landscapes, experts contend that this is not necessarily inherent in people – it must be
learned.     The obesity epidemic facing our country, particularly our children, is attributed to more
and more time spent indoors, meaning that they have less time learning that appreciation.


           Spending time outdoors does much more than expand appreciation for our landscapes.
Tony Hiss, in his book “The Experience of Place”, reminds us that our surroundings have an
impact on the way we feel and act, and points to studies that show that rats, when exposed to an
enriched, more outdoor environment, develop bigger cortexes, signaling greater intelligence.


           If that is true, there needs to be a steady focus on educating the public, especially the
younger generations, about the importance of “place”, because you want people to voluntarily
support the preservation of beautiful landscapes and viewsheds and not be guided strictly by
regulations (not to mention getting smarter!)


           The dangers of not doing everything we can to educate the public about the importance of
preserving important landscapes and views are real. Our region is one of the nation’s most
densely populated areas. Development patterns have changed; most growth occurs outside
traditional city centers. Farmland is being lost at a rate of seven acres per day as land is bought up
for suburban development. To meet the anticipated influx of 1.4 million new residents over the



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next decade, as many as 75,000 additional homes are in the planning stages, 15,000 alone on the
Hudson River waterfront.




Example of Sprawl, Dutchess County, NY


        Development is crucial to the continued well-being of the Hudson River Valley. But it
has been found that thoughtful development, in which consideration is given to preserving open
space, does better economically than unplanned development. Comparisons of communities that
take different paths towards development reveal striking differences in their economics. I
constantly cite Paul Bray’s article in the Times Union reporting on a study by sociologist Harvey
Molotch, regarding the different paths taken by Santa Barbara and Ventura, both waterfront
communities with similar demographics. Santa Barbara chose to develop along the principles of
“smart growth”. Ventura did not. Santa Barbara is now thriving while Ventura is not.


        Additional examples abound. With heritage tourism continuing its steady climb in
popularity, communities that preserve their character including the preservation of open space,
beautiful vistas, and historic sites are benefitting more than those who have allowed insensitive
development to dominate. Olana alone brings in $7.9 million into the local economy each year,
through the 170,000 visitors it attracts and the employment of 32 people. Tourism in the Hudson
Valley as a whole brings in $4.6 billion a year. In addition, thoughtfully planned development
also encourages more “green” industries to locate there – they want to be in places that share their
concern for culture and the environment.




                                                                                                    15
What can we all specifically do to encourage a greater understanding of the importance of
preserving cultural landscapes? This is where we can learn from our forbears of 150 years ago.
Spend time looking at these Hudson River School paintings for inspiration. Get out into the
wilderness as they did; you can actually hike on the Artists’ Trail, where you can see vistas that
are still virtually the same as the paintings created by the Hudson River School artists. Visit sites
like Olana and Thomas Cole’s home, Cedar Grove, that tell the story of this important period of
America’s history. In fact, spend lots of time visiting the hundreds of historic sites in the Valley,
especially this weekend – the first ever Heritage Weekend – wildly popular throughout Europe
but only just starting here. Through these learning opportunities, hopefully we will all start
internalizing the crucial concepts that came out of the artists, writers and landscape architects of
the 19th century – the importance of context, of long views, of the interplay between the pastoral
and the wilderness, of a sense of place, and of the need to take action, as they did, to preserve
these concepts.


         Ensure that the Hudson River School continues to be taught in the schools – at this point,
some schools in the valley include it in the 4th grade curriculum as part of local history and it is
mentioned in the 7th grade social studies curriculum. Advocate for adequate busing money to get
schoolchildren to these rich historic resources in the valley. Studies show that children learn
much more deeply when they experience a place rather than just read about it.


        Buy from local farmers markets so that there is a greater chance that the landscapes we
love remain that way.


        Support efforts underway now to protect our open space – for instance, Scenic Hudson
has launched an important campaign called “Saving the Land that Matters Most” that calls for
preserving 65,000 acres in the Hudson Valley. Those organizations preserving historic sites and
landscapes in the valley would all be grateful for your involvement.


        The debate between development and preservation of our wilderness and cultural
landscapes has been raging now for centuries. If the Hudson River School painters have taught us
anything, it is that we need to remember our roots – the Hudson River Valley, now coined “the
landscape that defined America”, is hallowed ground, and whatever development does take place
should respect the natural beauty of the Valley.




                                                                                                       16

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Illustrated Talk On Frederic Church And The Conservation Movement, by Sara J. Griffen

  • 1. Frederic Church and other Hudson River School painters as Catalysts for the Conservation Movement and their Legacy Today A Talk for the University at Albany Foundation Albany Institute of History and Art, September 2009 By Sara Johns Griffen View South from Olana It is at pivotal occasions like the Quadricentennial of Henry Hudson’s voyage up the Hudson River of 1609 that allow us to step back to see what lessons can be learned from our past, to help us find new ways to address current concerns. One of the issues that many of us care deeply about is how we can find a middle ground between the need for progress and development and the interest in preserving a defining characteristic of what makes America America -- - the extraordinary diversity of its scenery. This issue is not new – in fact, it has strong roots right here in the Hudson Valley, in the form of the Hudson River School painters. I would like to think that by understanding how they approached this issue, we may find fresh perspectives and perhaps inspiration on dealing with the challenge. To understand what caused the formation of America’s first official art movement, the Hudson River School, one needs to look back to colonial times. Early colonists had a very limited interest in the landscape as an art form. The American landscape, which was primarily wilderness at the time, was seen as a place of darkness and chaos, and the focus was on taming that wilderness. And taming they did – cultivating fields, cutting trees for firewood and houses, and otherwise putting their imprint of civilization on the land. 1
  • 2. During the 18th century, to the extent that there was art collected, it was primarily portraiture, or scenes of historical interest, with occasional landscape scenes portrayed in the background. If there were any landscape paintings collected, they were more likely to be by European artists, displaying pastoral scenes in the tradition of Claude Lorraine. It should also be remembered that the collecting world was quite small in the 17th and 18th centuries, as industry, and therefore enough wealth to actually collect, was only beginning. Those few who were wealthy tended to display their wealth through decorative arts – wallpaper, sconces, etc. rather than paintings. By the early 19th century, cities and industry were growing, gradually displacing the wilderness. With the steamboat invented in 1807, the Erie Canal opening in 1825, and the railroads starting to expand in the 1830’s, trade increased dramatically, bringing significant changes to the landscape. While there was great optimism about this exciting growth, there was also a growing nostalgia for undisturbed land. It was during this time that a group of artists, led by Thomas Cole, began to celebrate the beauty of the American wilderness. Thomas Cole (1801 – 1848), who came from Lancashire, England, moved to New York and began travelling up the Hudson River, through the Palisades and Highlands, eventually making his way up to the Catskills. His notes reveal a fascination with the beauty of the scenery…”Mists were resting on the vale of the Hudson like drifted snow,..” He was greatly impressed by Kaaterskill Falls, with its “savage and silent grandeur”. He would make numerous sketches in situ and then travel back to his studio in NY and prepare the works in oil. In 1825, his works were discovered by three popular artists, John Trumbell, William Dunlap and Asher Durand. From there, Cole’s fame quickly spread, encouraging many other artists to flock to the Hudson Valley to paint, and ultimately launching the movement known as the Hudson River School of painting. (Cole, Lake with Dead Trees, 1825). There were clear indications that Cole’s and others’ celebration of the distinctly American scenery struck a chord in the American public. Exhibits of these paintings in New York at the Artists Union between 1839 and 1851 drew up to 250,000 people a year and this was when New York’s population was barely 500,000. Before long, the public desired to experience 2
  • 3. these wilderness areas first hand, resulting in a booming tourist industry. By 1850 there were about 150 steamboats used for commerce and leisure, carrying a million passengers up and down the Hudson River. Cole’s and other artists’ work had their corollary in the writings of the group known as the Knickerbockers – including Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper and William Cullen Bryant. Influenced by the same romantic concepts as the artists, the Knickerbockers were able to express the moral and spiritual significance of nature that the artists were attempting to convey on canvas. The work of the Knickerbockers about American scenery and landscape in the 1830s and 40s helped pave the way for growing acceptance of the Hudson River School painters. Looking a little more closely at Cole’s work reveals that he not only wanted to celebrate the wilderness but had important messages to share. Cole’s approach to landscape painting, as professor David Schuyler points out, aspired to what he called “a higher style of landscape art”. Interested in composition, he chose to idealize the landscape rather than record it directly. At times, when natural scenery had already been affected by human intervention, he often chose to paint it as he imagined before “culture” intervened. Given Cole’s strong writing on the issue, it is clear that the sentiment behind his idealized paintings had a good deal to do with his concern about Americans’ lack of sensitivity to the beauty and uniqueness of the American scenery and that it was falling prey to economic development. He showed his great concern over the signs of progress by painting out the railroad or other evidence of industry or by idealizing the wilderness. In the painting Katterskill Falls, 1826, (right) scholars know, by comparing the sketch to the finished work, that in the latter, he took out the refreshment pavilion and sawmill. Also View from Mount Holyoke, Northhampton, MA omitted the refreshment pavilion. Another painting shows Cole’s willingness to enhance a scene to make it more visually appealing. View of Schroon Mountain, Essex Co, NY after a Storm (1838) he chose to include a small pond that could not have actually been there. It was as if at this point, he had studied the 3
  • 4. elements of nature so deeply that he could manipulate them in a manner that made sense in his aesthetic judgment. Cole increasingly felt it imperative to warn Americans that they were in danger of befalling the same fate as the Old World. One of his most famous painting series, Course of Empire, is thought by many historians to be symbolic of his fears for the New World, with the gradual metamorphosis from wilderness to civilization, to destruction, and finally to decay (show the Course of Empire series). Scholars believe that they demonstrated how concerned Cole was about how economic development was transforming the natural world. In his writings, he decried the massive felling of trees that had occurred over the past 2 centuries, stating “my heart was wounded by each savage blow (of the axe)”. It seems clear, that, between Cole’s paintings themselves, which awakened Americans’ sense of pride for its own country’s scenery, as well as his expressed concern for the loss of wilderness are clear precursors to later conservation and environmental movements. Moving forward to the second generation of the Hudson River School, roughly the 1850s and 60s, painters like Frederic Church, John Kensett, and Sanford Robertson Gifford carried the tradition to new heights, creating vast, awe inspiring scenes of both America and abroad. Their continued reverence for America’s natural beauty, but also concern about the continuing degradation of the wilderness, was shared by contemporary American writers such as Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Francis Perkins Marsh. Frederic Edwin Church was one of Cole’s only pupils. Born in Hartford in 1826, he was invited to study with Cole at his home in Catskill at the age of 18. They hiked all over the Catskills, sketching and bringing back their paintings to finish them in the studio. As National Gallery Deputy Director and Chief Curator Frank Kelly states, “His earliest drawings revealed a level of competence that equaled or even surpassed his master." After two years of study, Church moved to New York City where he quickly came to prominence, ultimately rising to fame as the nation’s greatest landscape painter of the 1840s and 50s. His paintings from South America, (see Cotopaxi, 1862), the Middle East and the Icebergs 4
  • 5. in Newfoundland, not to mention the Hudson River Valley, drew enormous crowds, with people lining up around the blocks and paying 25 cents to see just one image like Heart of the Andes. Church’s earlier works of the late 40s and early 50’s demonstrate a belief that there can be balance between development and preservation of the landscape. Frank Kelly points out several examples in his book FEC and the National Landscape), including his 1847 work View Near Stockbridge (right), and West Rock, New Haven (1849), showing a pastoral setting where humankind had settled nicely into American nature – adapting it, perhaps, but not destroying it. Also, few painters of his day portrayed as many sawmills as Church did. Sawmills were a symbol of both progress and of degradation (flooding, erosion of soil from felling of trees, pollution of the waterways etc.), and Church found many opportunities to paint them, such as Rutland Falls, Vermont, 1848) and New England Landscape (Evening After a Storm) c. 1849. However, by the late 1850’s he was moving more and more towards bemoaning the loss of America’s unspoiled nature. In his painting shown above, Twilight in the Wilderness (1860), critics believe its celebration of pristine wilderness may be symbolic of Church’s ambivalence over progress, and in fact may be a plea for preservation of the wilderness. When the subject of the dichotomy between progress (industrial development) versus preservation comes up, it is important to point out that the collectors of paintings by Cole and Church were often the very ones who were contributing to the destruction of the wilderness to make way for railroads and industry. As author Simon Schama pointed out, “Patrons Lumen Reed and Daniel Wadsworth prided themselves on their taste but they were merchants whose many profitable ventures were obliterating the woodlands they displayed on their walls.” 5
  • 6. What makes Frederic Church so unique as we discuss how the Hudson River School painters addressed these controversial issues of the time is that he chose to express his ideas through more than painting but in a 3 dimensional form – the creation of his home – Olana, and through his activism. In 1860, Church bought property in Greenport, directly across from his mentor’s home, Cedar Grove, in Catskill. Over the next 10 years, he acquired more property until he finally bought the top of the hill and began to build his ultimate home. The property had been a hard- scrabble farm, and Church devoted much time to transforming that land, modeling it on the natural style of landscape gardening practiced by European and American professional landscape gardeners of the early to mid- 19th century. The natural style was a romantic form of landscape gardening that incorporated eighteenth century aesthetic theories on the Beautiful and the Picturesque and called for gardening to be an art form that followed the lead of nature. (Masters) In America, Andrew Jackson Downing was the leading practitioner of the field, and had a significant impact on landscape design throughout the Hudson Valley as well as the entire country. At Olana, Church devoted himself to creating a primarily Picturesque landscape, as defined by Downing. Picturesque design produced “outlines of a certain spirited irregularity, surfaces, comparatively abrupt and broken, and growth of a somewhat wild and bold character”. This contrasts with the Beautiful mode of landscape design which shows little interest in wild nature. Instead, the Beautiful engendered “graceful outlines of highly cultivated forms”. Church used various techniques to achieve this Picturesque design – planting thousands of trees, creating areas of shrubbery and grass, and framing views throughout the property using a system of five miles of carriage drives. He created a lake out of swampland. He built up the 6
  • 7. farm area in the “ferme ornee” tradition – bringing in an aesthetic sensibility into the placement of the various farming elements – farm buildings, orchards, vegetable gardens etc. When he built his Persian-inspired house just below the highest point on the property, he was doing it for aesthetic and practical reasons -- creating a backdrop for the house, as well as protecting the house from high winds. All of these elements were situated within a background of the panoramic views of the Catskills, the Taconic Ranges and the Hudson River. In essence, Church was creating a three dimensional landscape painting, with the house and its environs as the foreground, the woodland, parkland and forest as the middle ground, and the views as the background. As Church himself put it “I can make more and better landscapes in this way than by tampering with canvas and paint in the studio” (1884). And this is precisely what A.J. Downing had said in the 1830’s, that a landscape should be planned in much the same manner as a painting is created, but that it was rare to have someone who was both a landscape architect and a painter. This is what makes Olana so extraordinary, as it was created by a painter; and not just any painter, but the most famous painter of his time. There are scholars who say that part of what was driving Church’s efforts to create this landscape was not just on an aesthetic basis but also from a conservationist standpoint. As Bethany Astrachen describes in her master’s thesis on Church’s Contribution to Wilderness Preservation, tree planting was called for in mid-nineteenth century by early wilderness preservationists to save the American landscape, which had lost a great deal of forest in the past two centuries. Church had two books in his library devoted to the importance of reestablishing forests, one of which, Man and Nature, published in 1864, was by one of the leaders of the conservation movement, George Perkins Marsh. Drawing parallels with the demise of the Roman Empire due to “man’s ignorant disregard of the laws of nature”, Marsh warns that the same could happen in America. The remedies include draining and irrigation, the building of dams, and the rebuilding of forests. At the same time, a number of articles were published in the mid-century lamenting over the destruction of America’s forests and the need for preservation through tree planting. Planting came to be thought of as a moral obligation for all Americans. In this climate of preservation, it seems reasonable to think that Church could have been influenced by these philosophies. In fact, Church’s correspondence in the 1860s has as a major theme the planting and nurturing of trees. Landscape architect Robert Toole confirms that the naturally-wooded areas that Church bought 7
  • 8. were incorporated as “wildernesses” within in the overall scheme of the landscape garden. Church’s plan was to balance the wild forest area and the pastoral park settings in his landscape scheme, which is something that Marsh strongly advocated for. Church’s active involvement in the preservation movement gives greater evidence that his own choices in creating his landscape could have had conservationist motives. Through his work on the saving of Niagara Falls from commercial onslaught and serving on the Central Park Commission, it is clear that he wanted to make a difference in preserving and creating beautiful landscapes. Church went on several sketching trips to Niagara Falls during the 1850s, resulting in two major paintings -- Niagara (1857) Corcoran Gallery of Art (see below) and Niagara Falls, from the American Side (1867) National Gallery of Scotland. At that time, a good deal of the area surrounding the falls had been stripped of its trees in preparation for commercial establishments. Frederick Law Olmstead, the leading landscape architect of the day, who led the movement to make Niagara Falls a State Reservation in 1885, credited Church as the catalyst for his efforts to preserve the falls. Olmstead writes in 1879: “My attention was first called to the rapidly approaching ruin of its characteristic scenery by Mr. F.E. Church, about ten years ago. Shortly afterwards, several gentlemen, frequenters of the Falls, met at my request, to consider this danger. As for Church’s involvement in Central Park, the movement to establish parks in America gained momentum throughout the first part of the 19th century, called for by Andrew Jackson Downing, who had seen the benefits of such parks in England. After Downing’s death, 8
  • 9. the movement shifted to Olmstead and Calvert Vaux, who had come up with the winning plan for Central Park, called Greensward, which capitalized on the features of the natural style of landscape gardening. The concept of Central Park was rooted in the idea that in the midst of important development of commerce, it was equally important to establish parks, which not only saved a piece of the land increasingly sought after by developers, but it also supplied to the “hundreds of thousands of tired workers who have no opportunity to spend their summers in the country…” a place for respite. Church was appointed a commissioner of the New York City Department of Public Parks in 1871. Olmstead described the importance of Church’s appointment and the contribution a painter could provide: “There is I think a peculiar propriety and significance in it…we were anxious on the matter of propriety that the art element should be recognized…”. Church was responsible for the siting of the Obelisk (known as Cleopatra’s needle). While records are scanty, there is no doubt that Church worked closely with Olmstead on various aspects of Central Park. Thus, not only through his paintings but in his actions Church played an important role in reflecting the mood of the time – concern over the loss of wilderness, but was also taking direct steps to put action behind his sentiments as part of the Conservation Movement. While Church’s work had declined in popularity by the late 1860’s, other painters like Albert Bierstadt and Thomas Moran found fame and success travelling west and painting dramatic vistas. Bierstadt first visited the Rockies in 1858 and began to paint vast images of Western scenery, which had broad popular impact. One painting, Looking Down Yosemite Valley (1865), (see right), is an example of his uncanny understanding of what Americans wanted to believe – that there was still untouched wilderness, and a promise of a new beginning after the Civil War. The writer and preservationist John Muir, Bierstadt’s literary counterpart, affirmed the idea that the Yosemite Valley could refresh the spirit. His activism (helped by, one would have to imagine, the public enthusiasm generated by Bierstadt’s hugely 9
  • 10. popular paintings) helped save the Yosemite Valley, first leading to Yosemite’s becoming a state park in 1864 and later a National Park in 1890. In 1870, Thomas Moran accompanied the first government- sponsored expedition to Yellowstone. The drawings and watercolors he brought back from the trip, such as Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (1872) (see right), helped convince Congress that Yellowstone should be preserved. In 1872, Yellowstone became the world’s first official National Park. Closer to home, it is widely recognized that the Conservation Movement led to the establishment of the Adirondack Forest Preserve in 1885. The legacy of the Hudson River School continued through into the 20th century. Even though the movement itself was out of favor, the momentum created during that period led to more important conservation measures in the early 20th century – in the Hudson Valley, the Palisades cliffs, just north of NYC, suffering from relentless quarrying in the 19th century, were saved in the early 20th century, becoming an Interstate institution in 1900. The Catskill Park was created in 1904. More broadly, the National Parks Service was established in 1917 and the Civilian Conservation Corps, a work relief program focused on natural resource conservation, was founded by FDR in 1933 during the depression. In the 40’s through early 60’s, environmental conservation interests seemed to take a back seat as the country was rebuilding itself after the war, leading to some memorable disasters such as the smog episode of 1943 in Los Angeles and when the Ohio River caught fire in 1969, spewing flames five stories high in the air due to pollution. In the 60’s Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, one of the first of her generation to sound the alarm for the environment. But it was back in the Hudson Valley that one of the great milestones was achieved, paving the way for the modern environmental movement. In 1963, Con Edison planned to embed the world’s largest hydro-electrical plant into the face of Storm King Mountain near Cornwall. The 17-year-old case, 10
  • 11. which was finally won by the opponents of the plan, set important precedents in environmental law, including the right of citizens to speak out and initiate lawsuits to protect the environment. The group formed during that time, Scenic Hudson, is now one of the most respected environmental organizations in the country. Other environmental groups, such as Pete Seeger’s Hudson River Sloop Clearwater, formed during that time and provided a strong voice to demand greater environmental efforts. Interestingly, it was about this time that the Hudson River School began to grow again in popularity. In fact, it was because of the very few people who knew that the Hudson River School would be famous again that Olana was saved from being auctioned off for its contents in 1964. By the 70’s, the Hudson River School was being used as part of the clarion call for preservation – Metropolitan Museum curator John K. Howat’s seminal book The Hudson River School and its Painters, was published in 1971 (in the middle of the Storm King battle) with all the proceeds going to Scenic Hudson. Another major visual and environmental threat occurred in 1979, when the State Power Authority advanced a project to build a huge nuclear power plant on riverfront land in Cementon, directly downriver from Olana, in Greene County. Two immense parabolic cooling towers were proposed which it was claimed would have emitted enormous amounts of water vapor – whereby the plumes would have towered thousands of feet in the air, dominating the primary southwesterly view from Olana and dwarfing the Catskills. This was bitterly opposed by environmental and citizen groups on ecological as well as economic, health, and social grounds. The Carey administration initially supported it. John Dyson, then head of the State Power Authority, aggressively advocated for it. State Parks Commissioner Orin Lehman would not permit the agency to testify against it. However, Friends of Olana, the Columbia County Historical Society and the Hudson River Conservation Society became joint interveners in the proceeding. The issue was also subject to review and permit approval by Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Its staff hired a consultant, Carl Petrich, who spent months studying the cultural and aesthetic impacts of this plant and focused on the views from the site of the former Catskill Mountain House, the State Forest Preserve and Olana. He concluded that this was one of 11
  • 12. the most important cultural landscapes in American history and that the proposal would be utterly destructive to the landscape and should not go forward. This position was adopted by the staff of FERC – apparently the first time it had recommended against the siting of a nuclear power plant on ANY grounds. Because it was almost certain that the full Commission would support the recommendation of the staff, Dyson withdrew the proposal with Governor Carey’s blessing. Environmental groups had been opposed to the Hudson River Conservation Society’s pushing the issue on aesthetic grounds – the community said concentrating on the visual issues was frivolous and that it would weaken their arguments of ecological, economic, social and health issues. But in the end, the decision was made on the visual impact – one of the first times in the U.S. that such an outcome had been based on these grounds. Because the proposal was withdrawn before a formal FERC ruling, it did not have the chance to become case law and therefore precedent-setting. Still, the proceedings were critical in helping environmental organizations know that a case could be won on aesthetic grounds for the preservation of a historic site’s view. In fact, it laid the groundwork for the New York State Environmental Quality Review procedures to include potential visual impacts in any environmental review of new development projects. We fast forward to more current times. In 1995, the U.S. Generating Company, announced its intention to build a $500 million gas-fired power plant on the river in Athens, NY approximately four miles northwest of Olana. The plant was to withdraw 4.2 million gallons of water per day. Opponents, including The Olana Partnership, said that the power was not needed locally, that the giant structure would mar the landscape and that the cooling systems would threaten water supplies and fish in the area. In the end, due to a negotiated settlement, the plant was built, but modified significantly, using cleaner combustion technology and a dry cooling system that would lower the stacks and reduce a number of pollutants and water consumption by 99%. In 1998, Saint Lawrence Cement, a subsidiary of the Swiss firm Holcim, announced a plan to build a $300 million cement plant within three miles of Olana. Its smokestack was to tower more than 600 feet above sea level. It would be the tallest 12
  • 13. structure between Manhattan and Albany, with a plume 6 miles across the state. This proposal drew the ire of many individuals and groups, with Friends of Hudson, The Hudson Valley Preservation Coalition, including Scenic Hudson, and The Olana Partnership taking the lead as groups with full party status. They argued that the plant was greatly out of scale with the small community of Hudson (population 7,500), that the company’s own information revealed dangerous levels of air pollution, that it would create only one new job, and that it would mar the views of one of the region’s most important sites, Olana. The dispute raged for six years. In the end, The New York Department of State gave a negative determination on the plant, arguing that the plant would be inconsistent with eight of the State’s coastal management policies. The ruling rested on three major findings – the significant adverse impact on Hudson’s waterfront, on the character of the Hudson Valley, and on Olana and other historic resources. Among the many references the DOS made to the importance of Olana, two are particularly poignant: “The Olana property is a designated landscape of extraordinary importance that recognizes its connection to the landscape beyond its borders" and "Olana’s viewsheds are among the most dramatic and famous in the Hudson River Valley.” There continues to be a strong legacy in protecting the beauty of the Hudson Valley. There have been great successes, not only in winning disputes over discordant industrial development projects, but in protecting the land. Environmental organizations like Scenic Hudson, the Open Space Institute, and New York State, have so far protected thousands of acres in the Hudson Valley. The Hudson River is cleaner than it has been in a hundred years. Forests have experienced a remarkable comeback, from 25% forest cover in 1890 to about 62% today. Agencies within New York State such as the Estuary Program within the Department of Environmental Conservation have made the preservation of open space and views one of their top priorities. State Parks has been working tirelessly to improve the existing historic resources within its jurisdiction, which has been staggering under a deferred maintenance deficit of $650 million. There are many State programs that have been created over the past 30 years to strengthen efforts to preserve open space such as Scenic Areas of Statewide Significance guidelines and the Coastal Management program of the DEC, which encourages LWRPs (Local Waterfront Revitalization Plans). The Hudson River Valley Greenway helps communities 13
  • 14. develop strategies for preserving their cultural resources while encouraging compatible economic development. The fact that the Hudson River Valley is now a National Heritage Area and the Hudson River an American Heritage River is a fitting tribute to all the work we’ve done to protect its assets. There are still major hurdles. New York is a home-rule state, which means that each community’s local government can decide for itself what kind of zoning, if any, it wants to impose to guide development. As a result, there is a patchwork of inconsistent development happening throughout the state. It would be great if there were a shared vision for future growth leading to a region-wide master plan. But how to develop a shared vision when our views can be so different? While many of us assume that everyone “gets it” in terms of appreciation for the wilderness and beautiful landscapes, experts contend that this is not necessarily inherent in people – it must be learned. The obesity epidemic facing our country, particularly our children, is attributed to more and more time spent indoors, meaning that they have less time learning that appreciation. Spending time outdoors does much more than expand appreciation for our landscapes. Tony Hiss, in his book “The Experience of Place”, reminds us that our surroundings have an impact on the way we feel and act, and points to studies that show that rats, when exposed to an enriched, more outdoor environment, develop bigger cortexes, signaling greater intelligence. If that is true, there needs to be a steady focus on educating the public, especially the younger generations, about the importance of “place”, because you want people to voluntarily support the preservation of beautiful landscapes and viewsheds and not be guided strictly by regulations (not to mention getting smarter!) The dangers of not doing everything we can to educate the public about the importance of preserving important landscapes and views are real. Our region is one of the nation’s most densely populated areas. Development patterns have changed; most growth occurs outside traditional city centers. Farmland is being lost at a rate of seven acres per day as land is bought up for suburban development. To meet the anticipated influx of 1.4 million new residents over the 14
  • 15. next decade, as many as 75,000 additional homes are in the planning stages, 15,000 alone on the Hudson River waterfront. Example of Sprawl, Dutchess County, NY Development is crucial to the continued well-being of the Hudson River Valley. But it has been found that thoughtful development, in which consideration is given to preserving open space, does better economically than unplanned development. Comparisons of communities that take different paths towards development reveal striking differences in their economics. I constantly cite Paul Bray’s article in the Times Union reporting on a study by sociologist Harvey Molotch, regarding the different paths taken by Santa Barbara and Ventura, both waterfront communities with similar demographics. Santa Barbara chose to develop along the principles of “smart growth”. Ventura did not. Santa Barbara is now thriving while Ventura is not. Additional examples abound. With heritage tourism continuing its steady climb in popularity, communities that preserve their character including the preservation of open space, beautiful vistas, and historic sites are benefitting more than those who have allowed insensitive development to dominate. Olana alone brings in $7.9 million into the local economy each year, through the 170,000 visitors it attracts and the employment of 32 people. Tourism in the Hudson Valley as a whole brings in $4.6 billion a year. In addition, thoughtfully planned development also encourages more “green” industries to locate there – they want to be in places that share their concern for culture and the environment. 15
  • 16. What can we all specifically do to encourage a greater understanding of the importance of preserving cultural landscapes? This is where we can learn from our forbears of 150 years ago. Spend time looking at these Hudson River School paintings for inspiration. Get out into the wilderness as they did; you can actually hike on the Artists’ Trail, where you can see vistas that are still virtually the same as the paintings created by the Hudson River School artists. Visit sites like Olana and Thomas Cole’s home, Cedar Grove, that tell the story of this important period of America’s history. In fact, spend lots of time visiting the hundreds of historic sites in the Valley, especially this weekend – the first ever Heritage Weekend – wildly popular throughout Europe but only just starting here. Through these learning opportunities, hopefully we will all start internalizing the crucial concepts that came out of the artists, writers and landscape architects of the 19th century – the importance of context, of long views, of the interplay between the pastoral and the wilderness, of a sense of place, and of the need to take action, as they did, to preserve these concepts. Ensure that the Hudson River School continues to be taught in the schools – at this point, some schools in the valley include it in the 4th grade curriculum as part of local history and it is mentioned in the 7th grade social studies curriculum. Advocate for adequate busing money to get schoolchildren to these rich historic resources in the valley. Studies show that children learn much more deeply when they experience a place rather than just read about it. Buy from local farmers markets so that there is a greater chance that the landscapes we love remain that way. Support efforts underway now to protect our open space – for instance, Scenic Hudson has launched an important campaign called “Saving the Land that Matters Most” that calls for preserving 65,000 acres in the Hudson Valley. Those organizations preserving historic sites and landscapes in the valley would all be grateful for your involvement. The debate between development and preservation of our wilderness and cultural landscapes has been raging now for centuries. If the Hudson River School painters have taught us anything, it is that we need to remember our roots – the Hudson River Valley, now coined “the landscape that defined America”, is hallowed ground, and whatever development does take place should respect the natural beauty of the Valley. 16