Hudson Valley estates (Olana, Vanderbilt, Sleepy Hollow, Kykuit) have specific architectural identities
— — four houses the river built four ways.
Not only on a wall.
“Four estates strung along the east bank of the Hudson, each in its own architectural register. Olana is Frederic Church's Persian-Moorish villa above the river at Hudson, finished in 1872. Vanderbilt Mansion at Hyde Park is a 1899 Beaux-Arts house by McKim, Mead and White. Sunnyside in Sleepy Hollow is Washington Irving's small Dutch-Romantic cottage with stepped gables. Kykuit, the Rockefeller house at Pocantico Hills, is a 1913 Georgian Revival of grey stone above terraced gardens, rebuilt by John D. Junior to his own taste. from the studio
Hudson Valley estates (Olana, Vanderbilt, Sleepy Hollow, Kykuit) have specific architectural identities, on ceramic.
Each tile is finished by hand in our Knoxville studio. Artwork is slowly infused into the ceramic surface under high heat and pressure, and rests beneath a thin glossy finish. The colour lives in the surface, not on top of it.
Pick any four 4-inch tiles — National Parks you've been to, a Smokies set, the four seasons of one place. $ for a set of , cork-backed, ready to live on the table.
The place, in three passes.
The four houses sit along roughly 90 miles of the east bank of the Hudson, between Tarrytown and the city of Hudson. Olana, completed in 1872, was the home of Hudson River School painter Frederic Edwin Church and his architect Calvert Vaux; it sits on a 250-acre designed landscape above the river. Vanderbilt Mansion at Hyde Park, finished in 1899 by McKim, Mead and White for Frederick W. Vanderbilt, is one of the surviving Gilded Age country houses in the valley. Sunnyside in Sleepy Hollow was Washington Irving's home from 1835. Kykuit at Pocantico Hills was completed in 1913 for the Rockefeller family.
Each house wears a different stylistic skin. Olana is Persian-Moorish brick and tile, with stenciled ornament inside and a polychrome exterior that Church directed in detail. Vanderbilt is Indiana limestone in cool Beaux-Arts symmetry, a 54-room house on a low rise above the river. Sunnyside is whitewashed stone and stepped Dutch gables, deliberately picturesque under wisteria. Kykuit is grey Pocantico fieldstone in Georgian Revival, with classical terraces designed by William Welles Bosworth descending toward the Hudson. The four together make a short course in nineteenth-century American architectural taste.
All four sites are open seasonally with guided interior tours. Olana and Vanderbilt are New York State and National Park Service properties respectively, with open grounds year-round and house tours roughly April through October. Sunnyside, run by Historic Hudson Valley, is open spring through fall with extended hours during autumn festivals. Kykuit tours run May through early November under National Trust for Historic Preservation auspices, with mandatory shuttle access from Philipsburg Manor in Sleepy Hollow. Tickets for Kykuit sell out weeks ahead in October during peak Hudson Valley foliage.