Olana Frederic Church Center for Art and Landscape

The new Frederic Church Center for Art and Landscape is a state-of-the-art, sustainable center that welcomes and orients local and global visitors to the Olana State Historic Site. Located near Hudson, NY, Olana was the home, studio, farm, and culminating masterpiece of Frederic Edwin Church, the preeminent artist of the 19th Century Hudson River School of landscape painting.

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Rendering of Frederic Chruch Center at Olana State Historic Site

The 4,500 SF building is the linchpin of landscape architects Nelson Byrd Woltz’s award-winning Strategic Landscape Design Plan for the entire 250-acre site. As an interpretive threshold to Church’s vision of Olana as a work of art uniting nature and culture, the Center’s design orients visitors to the immersive experience of the landscape.

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Rendering of the terrace at Frederic Church Center
The Center is embedded in the landscape and opens onto an outdoor terrace.

Conceived as an indoor-outdoor space, the new building deepens the public’s connection to the historic site’s landscape and architecture and supports growth in attendance with ticketing, display areas, a multipurpose room, café, restrooms, parking, outdoor terraces, and connecting paths.

 

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  • Rendering of the Frederic Church Center entry lobby
    Olana's Frederic Church Center is one of the first public buildings in New York State to be constructed with mass timber.
  • Rendering of the cafe at the Frederic Church Center
    For the first time in Olana’s 55-year history as a public site, a cafe will greet visitors as they plan their day.

In the spirit of Church’s commitment to environmental stewardship, the all-electric building is also an exemplar of sustainability, integrating mass timber construction with glue-laminated wood columns and beams and cross-laminated timber (CLT) roof and wall panels (a first for a public building in New York State).

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News
Rendering of the Frederic Church Center at Olana
Watch – Adam Yarinsky on Carbon Neutrality and the Olana Frederic Church Center
Press
Rendering of the landscaped terrace at the new Frederic Church Center for Art and Landscape
Olana Frederic Church Center in The Architect’s Newspaper
Rendering of the interior of the Frederic Church Center for Art and Landscape, showing the mass timber structure
Olana Frederic Church Center in The Art Newspaper