The new Frederic Church Center for Art and Landscape at Olana State Historic Site is officially open. The carbon-neutral visitor center serves as a gateway to the site and a hub for interpretive programming and recreation. The sustainably designed, all-electric building is the first structure built at Olana since Church’s lifetime.
The visitor center, which will serve the more than 200,000 annual visitors, is also believed to be the first public building in New York constructed with mass timber, which is made from multiple layers of solid wood panels.
Olana State Historic Site is a historic house museum and landscape in Greenport, Columbia County, New York, near the city of Hudson and overlooking the river. The estate was home to Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), one of the major figures in the Hudson River School of landscape painting.
Designed by Architecture Research Office and Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects, the Frederic Church Center includes a spacious entry lobby for ticketing and orientation, a café, gender neutral restrooms and a multipurpose room adjoining outdoor terraces and paths that connect to Olana’s historic carriage road network.
Photo: Frederic Church Center for Art and Landscape at Olana State Historic Site (provided).
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