CHRISTMAS IN THE HUDSON VALLEY
—December 4, 2010—
From Doylestown: From New Hope:
Departure Time: 6:30 A.M. Departure Time: 6:45 A.M.
Return Time: Approx. 8:00 P.M. Return Time: Approx. 8:15 P.M.
Cost: $129.00 due at time of reservation
Reservation deadline is October 14, 2010
Usher in the holiday season with private tours of three of the Hudson Valley’s most magnificent mansions.
Your morning begins in Columbia County, New York, for a visit to Greenport’s Olana, a beautiful Moorish Villa and home of Frederick Edwin Church, a major American artist of the Hudson River School of Painters. You will be led on a journey through time, seeing a remarkably preserved home complete with much of the original furniture purchased by Church during trips to the Middle East, and world class paintings from his personal collection.
Born in 1826 in Hartford, Connecticut, Church studied for several years under Thomas Cole, a founding figure of the Hudson River School. Church later moved to New York and began his independent career. He purchased a 126-acre farm, married Isabel Crane, and raised a family.
Soon after purchasing an additional 18 acres at the top of a hill overlooking his property in 1867, he and his family left for an eighteen-month tour of Europe and the Middle East. Impressed by the architecture of Beirut and Damascus, he returned to New York, envisioning a home that incorporated Middle Eastern elements and designs. The result was Olana, an unusual mixture of Victorian structural rudiments and Moorish decorative motifs from different times and places. Its interior was filled with thousands of objects meant to highlight the glory of great civilizations of the past.
Turning his attention to landscaping his property, over a 40-year period Church designed and transformed previously treeless agricultural fields into artistic masterpieces. He constructed Olana’s landscape in the same manner he constructed the landscapes in his paintings: with an eye to composition, balance, and faithfulness to nature.
When Church died in 1900, Olana was willed to his youngest son. It was subsequently passed down through generations until the 1960's when the estate was to be auctioned. The Olana Preservation was formed to raise funds for its purchase and solicited donations even as Sotheby’s tagged the furniture with lot numbers. With help from the State of New York, the property was bought in 1996 and opened to the public.
Today, Olana is one of the few intact artists’ home/studio/estate complexes in the United States. It was designated a National Historic Landmark in 1965.
After lunch on your own in Rhinebeck, you continue your tour at Wilderstein, an opulent mansion, renowned for its magical Queen Anne architecture and lavish interiors. Wilderstein, German for “wild man’s stone” after a nearby Indian petroglyph, was designed in 1852 by architect John Ritch for real estate investor and export trader Thomas Suckley and his wife Catherine Murray Browne.
Suckley was a descendant of the Beekman and Livingston families whose estates were prominent landmarks in the Hudson River Valley for generations. In 1888 the original two-story Italianate villa was remodeled and enlarged by Suckley’s son Robert and his wife Elizabeth. The home was transformed into an elaborate Queen Anne style structure with the addition of a dramatic five-story circular tower offering a commanding view of the surrounding landscape. The interiors were designed by Joseph Tiffany, cousin of Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Three generations of Suckleys resided at Wilderstein, the last of whom was Margaret (Daisy) Suckley, a cousin and closest confidante to Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Miss Suckley traveled with FDR throughout his presidency, gave and trained his black Scottish terrier Fala, helped to establish his library in Hyde Park, and was with him when he was fatally stricken with polio at Warm Springs, Georgia, in 1945. She died at Wilderstein in 1991 at the age of one hundred. Beginning at Christmas 1984, she opened her home to the public. The tradition continues to this very day as Hudson Valley and New York City florists and designers decorate the house for the Yuletide season.
Your day concludes in Staatsburg, New York, at the 65-room Beaux Arts Mills Mansion. Here you will be welcomed into a Gilded Age Christmas complete with richly-decorated turn-of-the-century Christmas trees festooned with Edwardian-style ornaments, historic dining room table centerpieces, and period floral arrangements.
Designed by McKim, Meade and White, the leading architectural firm of the time, this show palace was built as a country home for financier and philanthropist Ogden Mills and his wife Ruth Livingston Mills. The exterior is embellished with balustrades, pilasters, and a massive portico. Its interior is luxuriantly decorated with marble fireplaces, elaborately carved and gilded Louis XIV, XV, and XVI furniture, silk fabrics, Oriental porcelains, and, a collection of art objects from Europe and ancient Greece. The mansion, with its taste for European grandeur yet reverence for American heritage, is often considered the purist example of an American Renaissance building.
The tour includes deluxe motorcoach transportation, admissions, services of professional tour guides, and all taxes and gratuities per itinerary.
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