Reporting this morning that Don Pollack, who is retracing the route of Lincoln's inaugural train trip from Springfield to Washington, visited Olana while here in Hudson yesterday got me wondering if Frederic Church would have been in residence at Olana when Lincoln passed through. The answer, I've discovered, is "no," or more like "not quite." In February 1860, Church purchased a 126-acre farm, now part of the grounds of Olana, but it wasn't until the early summer of 1861 that he commissioned Richard Morris Hunt to design a home where he and his wife, Isabel Carnes, whom he married in June 1860, could live and raise a family. The board-and-batten cottage Hunt designed is Cosy Cottage, now the headquarters of The Olana Partnership. In 1867, Church purchased the hilltop above the farm, and in 1872, he and his family moved into the Persian-inspired mansion, designed by Calvert Vaux, that he built on that hilltop, which we now know as Olana.
I always thought Olana was designed in the Hispano-Moorish, or Mudéjar style, rather than "Persian-Inspired" as you wrote. Who says you can't learn something new every day? PHA
ReplyDeleteI don't consider myself an authority on Olana, Philip, but the Olana website calls it "Persian-inspired," so I decided to go with that.
ReplyDeleteCarol and Philip, here's the quote from FEC regarding his design and why we use Persian-inspired to describe the architecture of the house:
ReplyDelete“I hope to be in New York in a week or so – and then have the pleasure of seeing you – but a Feudal Castle which I am building – under the modest name of a dwelling house – absorbs all of my time and attention. I am obliged to watch it so closely – for having undertaken to get my architecture from Persia where I have never been – nor any of my friends either – I am obliged to imagine Persian architecture – then embody it on paper . . . Still – I enjoy this being afloat on a vast ocean paddling along in a dreamy belief that I shall reach the desired port in due time.” Frederic Edwin Church to J.F. Weir, June 8, 1871, Archives of American Art.
I think, Carole, the term Hispano-Moorish stuck because that's what I recall Jim Ryan told me. Of course, some of the Moors in Spain were probably of Persian (Iranian) decent. And I'm especially interested in this sort of cultural confluence, which was, or is the Iberian world. It fascinates me to see how it further evolved, or morphed into yet another shape when it converged with the Maya-Azteca aesthetic here in Mexico. I'm certain Octavio Paz addressed the topic in a far more eloquent fashion!
ReplyDeleteWell, that's straight out the equine oris, notwithstanding the fact Church had "never been – nor any of my friends either – " to Persia! It might be interesting to delve further into his sources for inspiration--what was in vogue then--and though few had ventured to Iran, I'll bet a doubloon many of his peers had traipsed through Granada and Seville.
ReplyDeleteHave you read Ana Maria Menocal's, "Ornament of the World," Yale University Press? -PHA
The major inspiration for his designs for the main house (I stress main house because Olana is actually the totality of the site - the house, studio, landscape which he designed that as well, the farm and the views) were two large folio books full of lithographs and engraved plates that he picked up in Paris while on his European/Middle Eastern tour in the 1870s - Monuments modernes de la Perse by Pascal Coste, Paris 1867 and Les Arts Arabes by Jules Bourgoin, Paris 1868. The second includes images of Islamic architecture throughout the Old World. There are elements of the house that directly relate to the Alhambra, for instance.
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