Hudson River Valley: drawing on tradition

Sierra, July-August, 1992 by Jeff Wallach

When Romanticized landscape paintings of New York's Hudson River Valley first appeared in the early 19th century, a sarcastic art critic coined the term "Hudson River School" to describe the luminescent images of forests clinging to mountains slopes, waterfalls plunging between granite cliffs, and thunderclouds tearing across darkening skies. The name was meant to poke fun at the then-heretical idea that virtue could be found in the unpredictable and untamed. But the label stuck, and the style of artists such as Thomas Cole, Asher Durand, and Frederic Church attracted patrons and admirers - many of whom, living in congested Manhattan at the river's southern end, relished the notion of accessible nature.

Even then it would have been difficult to find truly wild scenes so near New York City; these painters intentionally idealized and exaggerated their settings. In so doing, they created a new American aesthetic that saw spiritual values in natural beauty. At the same time, the "Knickerbocker" writers - Washington Irving, James Fenimore Cooper, and William Cullen Bryant among them - romanticized and popularized the Hudson and its surrounding countryside in stories such as Irving's "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and Cooper's The Leather-stocking Tales.

But even as painters and writers clamored to interpret the Hudson Valley landscape, the region was changing. Ever since Dutch sloops traveled the 315-mile-long river to supply settlements, the Hudson has served commercial purposes. In 1807, steamboats ushered in an era of romantic river travel, but also began to urbanize the wilderness they brought people to see. In 1825, the year the Hudson River School emerged, the completion of the Erie Canal connected New York city to the country's interior, firmly establishing the Hudson as a major trade route and its towns as industrial centers. Some painters simply ignored evidence of the Machine Age, such as an iron foundry on the riverbank at Cold Spring, because it intruded on their aesthetic vision.

The clash between aesthetics and commerce continues today. In the 1960s and '70s, a legal battle over a proposed hydropower project on Storm King Mountain epitomized the conflict. Local groups (aided by the Sierra Club) successfully fought Consolidated Edison's plan to build the facility by showing that it threatened the Hudson's scenic, cultural, and historical values. The Storm King case established citizens' rights to sue a government to protect natural resources and science beauty, and provided much of the impetus behind passage of the National Environmental Policy Act.

Much of the terrain surrounding the Hudson has received permanent protection. New York State has designated 2.5 million acres in the Catskill Mountains and 6 million acres in the Adirondacks as parkland, and a consortium of groups is working to establish a Hudson River Greenway that would encompass nearly 4 million acres along 150 miles of the river from Manhattan north to Albany.

Despite such successes, Hudson Valley residents can never forget that they rub shoulders with the most populated region in the country. Developers want to construct 14,000 homes and apartments and 8 million square feet of office space in Sterling Forest, the largest privately owned wilderness property in the vicinity of New York City. Inter-Power, a private utility, hopes to build a coal-burning power plant near the Hudson, and the riverside town of Newburgh plans to expand its airport onto 8,000 acres of open space to absorb some of the traffic from New York City's airports.

The valley's beauty still inspires locals, but to action as much as to the fine arts. For 25 years singer Pete Seeger's sloop Clearwater has plied the river raising money and consciousness, sponsoring festivals and educating the public about environmental issues. The region support its own environmental magazine, Upriver/Downriver, with a readership of 30,000, and an official "river keeper" who scours the waterway for polluters. Groups such as Scenic Hudson (which spearheaded the Storm King case), the Hudson River Foundation (funded by utility money from the Storm King settlement), and the Sierra Club (with 27,000 Hudson Valley members) scramble to protector open land being eyed for development, and to repair a river suffering from more than 150 years of industrial abuse.

Today the 19th-century painterly vision of the Hudson may seem more romantic than ever. But the mountains and forest that inspired those artists are there still, continuing to fuel devotion to the valley's protection.

Jeff Wallach is a freelance writer in New York City.