[This review originally appeared in The Public Historian, 13, 2 (1995): 89-91]
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Thomas Cole: Sustainability/Feasibility Study, no author. Boston, Massachusetts: National Park Service, North Atlantic Regional Office, 1991. |
From 1825 until he died in 1848, the eminent landscape artist Thomas Cole lived in the small New York village of Catskill, located on the Hudson River and nestled at the foot of his beloved Catskill mountains. He boarded at Cedar Grove, a modest Federal-style home owned by an Alexander Thomas, whose niece Cole married in 1836.
Until his untimely death, he and his wife resided at Cedar Grove where, in a small studio to the southeast of the house, he completed some of his greatest paintings, including the "Stages of Empire" series. He also trekked regularly into the Catskills to paint such nearby locales as Kaaterskill Clove, Round Top, High Peak, and the Catskill Mountain House, the popular summer resort for nineteenth-century tourists.
Cole's Catskill home still survives but has greatly deteriorated in the last 30 years. Named a National Historic Landmark in 1965, the property was listed as a "priority two" or "endangered" property" in the 1980s. This present report, prepared by the North Atlantic Regional Office of the National Park Service, seeks to determine what should be done with Cedar Grove. A central question is whether the property, plus related painting sites in the immediate Catskill region, should become a National Historic Site operated by the NPS.
The outline of the report is straightforward. Opening sections explain its purpose and then justify the NPS's interest in the Cedar Grove. Though the house is without most of its original furnishings and the property has been greatly reduced in acerage since Cole's time, the report justifies the site as significant, first, because it is situated so close to the artist's source material. The site is also said to be important because, directly across the Hudson, is Olana, the Persian-Italianate home of the landscape painter Frederic Church, who, as a young man, studied with Cole in Catskill for two years and who later became the best-known member of the "Hudson River School," of which Cole is usually said to be the unknowing founder.
The report then evaluates the practical suitability of Cedar Grove by evaluating its locational potential for tourism and the problems and possibilities of the house, studio, outbuildings, and grounds. The site is located in a region where tourism is strong and growing; major interstate and state highways provide easy access to the site. The two-story brick house is a shell of its former self, however, and needs considerable preservation and stabilization.
The last part of the report presents three scenarios as to how the NPS might or might not involve itself the site. In "Alternative A," Cedar Grove would be owned and operated by the agency, which would run the site as an interpretive center that would introduce Cole in relation to the Catskill region and examine his connections to the development of the Hudson River School. The aim would be "to tell the story of the founder of the first American school of landscape painting and how this helped set the stage for the beginning of a conservation ethic in the United States" (p. 23). The house and studio would be partially restored; the former would largely contain interpretive displays and audio-visual programs for visitors, who could then select a personalized tour route to many of the actual natural sites depicted in Cole's paintings.
In "Alternative B," the Cole home would become a kind of "satellite" to Olana State Historic Site, which would widen its interpretive programs to include information on Cole and the Hudson River School. In this scenario, most of the house and outbuildings would not be required for visitation (one or two rooms might be used for exhibits and programs), and the use of the property could be transferred to some other public entity, such as the county historical society. In the last scenario, "Alternative C," the site would continue to be as it is, and the likely future would be "the form of continuing deterioration known as `demolition by neglect'" (p. 28).
A major problem with this report is its lack of passion: the authors come to no clear final decision as to what is to be done with the Cole site. They claim they cannot, since their purpose is to evaluate and recommend. Yet if they do not make a clear pronouncement as to what should be done with the property, who will? The body that will have final say‑-members of Congress‑-cannot afford to support, in these difficult economic times, any costly new federal program unless it is powerfully and inconvertibly justified.
This report provides no such justification. The authors clearly believe that the most appropriate action is the site's becoming a National Historic Site run by the NPS. But their support is hedged by qualifications and potential problems; in addition, their description of possible interpretive programs and tours is sketchy and difficult for an outsiders to imagine for themselves.
In short, the authors have not really done their homework, and the result is unfortunate, since, without doubt, Cole's home is invaluable to our nation's heritage and should be preserved and interpreted in the ways the report's "Alternative A" proposes. For public historians, the lessons are at least two: first, that in producing such a report, it is important to involve laypeople and professionals who have an inside, heartfelt sense of the site that is to be evaulated. Professional agency personnel alone do not always have the heart or drive to work out a thorough plan to justify a historic site's being saved.
Second, the report points to the need whereby federal agencies become willing to involve private individuals and groups in much more active ways. In today's difficult economic times, a fourth significant alternative that the report should have considered is the NPS's "jump starting" Cedar Grove, through providing monies and assistance for preserving the property preparing an interpretive center. At the same time, however, the agency could provide "seed money" that would encourage private bodies to become involved in the long-term operating and caring for of the site.
As things stand, it is hard to believe that Cole's Cedar Grove will be saved by the NPS. The episode is a lesson in the need to revitalize the considerable power of individual and community commitment in preserving and presenting American history.