illustrated talk on frederic church and the conservation movement, by sara j. griffen

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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.

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Frederic Church and other Hudson River School painters as Catalysts for the Conservation Movement and their Legacy Today, a talk given for the University of Albany at the Albany Institute of History and Art, September 2009

TRANSCRIPT

Page 1: Illustrated Talk On Frederic Church And The Conservation Movement, by Sara J. Griffen

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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,

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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.

Page 16: Illustrated Talk On Frederic Church And The Conservation Movement, by Sara J. Griffen

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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.