Excursions

Consultation with members and their guests has resulted in a program of excursions and visits designed to familiarize them with something of the heritage and resources of the Hudson River Valley. Arrangements for travel and lunch are included in each program, together with expert guidance on the site to be visited; faculty and associates of Bard College will be available during the excursions.

Visit to the Franklin D. Roosevelt Home, Library, and Museum

Tuesday, August 2

Hyde Park, NY
Depart from the Reem-Kayden Science Center at 9:30,
return to campus in the afternoon.

Faculty: Susan Aberth, Associate Professor of Art History at Bard College.

The National Park Service administers the Home of Franklin D. Roosevelt National Historic Site, Roosevelt’s Top Cottage retreat, and the Eleanor Roosevelt National Historic Site at Val-Kill. President Roosevelt bequeathed his 35-room home, Springwood and much of his Hudson River property to the federal government as a gift to the American people in 1945. Eleanor Roosevelt’s home at Val-Kill, where she lived from 1945 until her death in 1962, opened in 1984 as the first National Historic Site dedicated to a First Lady. The combined Roosevelt historic sites comprise more than 500 acres of the original 1500-acre family estate.

Designed by FDR himself, the Library is the first presidential library and the only one ever used by a sitting president. The Museum offers permanent and changing exhibitions, K-12 curriculum-based educational programs and public programs, including a World War II “Bivouac” and USO Show on Memorial Day weekend, the annual Roosevelt Reading Festival in June and Children’s Reading Festival in December. The FDR Library and Museum’s special exhibition: “Action and Action Now” FDR’s First Hundred Days opens on March 4, 2008. The Roosevelt Library archive is the premier research center in the world for study and research of the Roosevelt era. It contains more than 17 million pages of documents, photographs, books, and audiovisual materials, including the papers of President and Mrs. Roosevelt and more than 375 of their associates. The FDR Library also operates the Henry A. Wallace Visitor and Education Center, which serves all visitors to the Roosevelt site with its orientation exhibits and film, visitor amenities, conference and education facilities, The New Deal Store which is open daily, and Mrs. Nesbitt’s Café, which is open April 1 through mid-November.The Library’s Digital Archive, created in partnership with Marist College, contains more than 15,000 digitized archival documents, public domain photographs, and finding aids.

Walking tour of Annandale and visit to the Church of St. John the Evangelist

Wednesday, August 3

Annadale-on-Hudson, NY
Depart from the Reem-Kayden Center at 10:00 AM
and return to campus in the afternoon

Faculty: Elizabeth Chilton, Professor of Anthropology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and Christopher Lindner,  Archaeologist in Residence at Bard College.

The tour will begin with a slide lecture by Elizabeth Chilton on area archaeology and history. Dr. Chilton is a professor of archaeology and anthropology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the Director of the Center for Heritage and Society.

We will then take a bus to Germantown to visit the Bard College Archaeological Field School, Directed by Christopher Lindner. The earliest mass influx of Germans to America settled this part of the Hudson Valley in the 1710s. The descendant community and Bard College are excavating and exhibiting the homes of the 18th-century Reformed (Calvinist) ministers; see http://inside.bard.edu/archaeology. Dr. Christopher Lindner has done extensive research on local history of Native Americans, Palatine Germans, and African Americans.

After we tour the field school, we will travel by bus to the Church of St. John the Evangelist in Barrytown (http://www.stjohnsbarrytown.org/). The Church of St. John Evangelist was founded by a Trustee of St. Stephen’s after years of pastoral ministry by students of the College among workers on local estates. A premier example of Hudson Valley architecture, the church is undergoing an historic restoration while continuing its original mission.

After lunch we will travel back to campus and continue with a walking tour of Bard College (http://www.bard.edu/about/). John Bard founded St. Stephen's College – its original name -- in association with the New York City leadership of the Episcopal church. His grandfather's country estate, Hyde Park, lent its name to that Hudson River town. For its first 60 years, St. Stephen's offered young men a classical curriculum in preparation for entrance into the seminaries of the Episcopal church. In support of this venture, John Bard donated the Chapel of the Holy Innocents and part of his riverside estate, Annandale, to the College.

Visit to the Clermont Historical Site

Thursday, August 4

Clermont, NY
Depart from the Reem-Kayden Center at 10:00,
return to campus in the afternoon.
Website: http://www.friendsofclermont.org/

Faculty: Odile Chilton, Associate Professor of French at Bard College.
Robert R. Livingston, Jr. (1746-1813), was Clermont's most notable resident. A member of the Committee of Five responsible for drafting the Declaration of Independence, he also served as the first United States Minister of Foreign Affairs (Secretary of State) and, as Chancellor of the State of New York, he gave the oath of office to George Washington as first President of the United States.
 
Because of the Livingston family's prominent role in support of independence, Clermont was burned by British troops under the command of General John Vaughan during a foray up the Hudson River in the autumn of 1777. Margaret Beekman Livingston, who managed the estate during most of the war years. rebuilt the family home between 1779 and 1782. After independence was won, Chancellor Livingston began developing Clermont as an agriculture showplace. His experiments with sheep breeding and methods for increasing the yield of crops, while retaining the fertility of the soil, received national attention In 1792 the Chancellor began construction of an elaborate new mansion just south of the original house as the centerpiece of his experimental farm. Built in the shape of a capital "H." this house was also called Clermont It was destroyed by fire in 1909, but its ruins are still visible and indicate its size and grandeur.
 
Chancellor Livingston concluded his public career as Thomas Jefferson's Minister to France between 1801 and 1804. While in Paris, he negotiated the Louisiana Purchase and entered into a partnership with Robert Fulton a Pennsylvania- born painter and inventor who shared Livingston's fascination with steam navigation. Their creation which they called the North River is known to history as the Clermont Their steamboat embarked on its maiden voyage between New York City and Albany in 1807, setting off a transportation revolution in the United States.
Website: http://www.friendsofclermont.org/

Visit to Olana

Friday, August 5

Depart at 9:30 from the Reem-Kayden Center,
and return to campus in the afternoon
Website: http://www.olana.org

Faculty: Susan Aberth, Associate Professor of Art History at Bard College.


Named for a fortress treasure-house in ancient Persia, Olana was the home of Frederic Edwin Church (1826-1900), one of America's most important artists, a student of Thomas Cole, and a major figure in the Hudson River School of landscape painting. Built high on a hill near Hudson, New York between 1870 and 1891, then as now, Olana offers magnificent sweeping vistas of the Catskill Mountains, the Hudson River and the Taconic Hills. Today, Olana is a New York State Historic Site, a National Historic Landmark, and one of the most popular tourist destinations in the Hudson Valley and upstate New York.

The first truly American style of landscape painting was the Hudson River School, named for the area in which many of its adherents worked. The school was not an academic institution but rather a loose association of painters who worked in a similar style. They were colleagues, friends, and supporters of each other, studying together and often traveling together throughout New York, New England, and even as far as Europe and the Middle East. 

 
The Hudson River School flourished between the mid-1830s and the mid-1870s. Its subject matter is often landscapes from the Hudson River valley, the Catskills, the Adirondacks, and the White Mountains of New Hampshire. However, as the country expanded to the West, the Hudson River School artists followed. Some painted Yosemite, Yellowstone, the plains of Nebraska, and other Western scenes. Others headed to South and Central America, painting lush tropical scenes. 

 
Paintings of the Hudson River School are characterized by fidelity to nature; clarity of detail; skies sometimes glowing at sunrise or sunset, sometimes shining a sunny, clear blue; nearly invisible brushstrokes; an overall feeling of tranquility; and a presentation of the American landscape as a new Eden in a benevolent universe, blessed by God and providing an uplifting moral influence. 

Thomas Cole is widely acknowledged as the founder of the Hudson River School. The most prominent artists working in this genre include Frederic Church, Albert Bierstadt, Asher B. Durand, John Frederick Kensett, Jasper Cropsey, Thomas Worthington Whittredge, Sanford Robinson Gifford, and Alfred Thompson Bricher.
Website: http://www.olana.org/

Visit to the General Theological Seminary in Manhattan

Saturday, August 6

Depart from the Reem-Kayden Center at 9:30 (no return trip).
Overnight accommodations can be arranged through the Seminary.
Website: http://www.gts.edu

Faculty: Bruce Chilton, Bernard Iddings Bell Professor of Religion at Bard College and Deirdre Good, Professor of New Testament.


General Seminary's mission, to educate and form leaders for the church in a changing world, has been a central focus throughout its long history.  Chartered by General Convention in 1817, General's very name was chosen to reflect the intention of its founders: that it would serve the entire Episcopal Church. Church leaders, with a burst of national vision, conceived a theological institution that would belong to the whole Episcopal Church, where students from all parts of the country would come to prepare for ordination.

 
An important milestone occurred in 1819.  Clement Clarke Moore, who would later become a professor at General, but who is best known as the author of the poem which begins, "Twas the night before Christmas," gave a large parcel of land, an apple orchard, to the Church on condition that a seminary be built there.  The land stood on the west side of Manhattan close to the Hudson River.  East Building, the Seminary's first home, was erected in 1827 and was joined in 1836, by West Building, built  to house 60 students.  The Seminary's location in New York City quickly proved to be a great asset and defining characteristic.

 
Throughout its history General has followed its mandate to be a seminary of the whole church, a vision that has broadened to include the ecumenical community, the Anglican Communion, the City of New York, and the Church at large.  Toward the end of the 19th century Dean Eugene Augustus Hoffman began an ambitious building program, dubbed in the press as "Dean Hoffman's Grand Design."' By erecting a series of stately brick buildings--dormitories, faculty apartments, and a classroom building--around the perimeter of the block, a magnificent  quadrangle or  "Close," after the fashion of English universities, was created.

On the east side of the seminary bordering 9th Avenue, the new Christoph Keller Jr Library opens in August 2011. We will be given a guided tour of the new library by The Rev. Dr Drew Kadel, Director of the Library. For details of the new library see: http://stmarkslibrary.wordpress.com/

Outside the seminary on 10th Avenue, extending from Gansevoort Street north to 30th Street, is the High Line. It is built as a walkway and park on the old freight railway track offering unique views of the Chelsea and Clinton neighborhoods. See: http://www.thehighline.org/ We will include a walk on the High Line if people are interested.

Members who wish to book accommodations should contact the seminary directly:
(646) 717-9717; (212) 929-3888 ext. 576 or reservations@tutucenter.org.
When calling, use the reference Bard College SNTS 2011 Room Block.

Website: http://www.gts.edu