“One of the Greats” Visits One of the Greats
Two things you should know about me: I LOVE historic house museums, and I LOVE Florence + The Machine. Evidence to the former: I visit historic house museums, I research historic house museums, I took a whole class on historic house museums, and I work at a historic house museum. Evidence to the latter: Florence + The Machine has been on my Spotify Wrapped for at least three years running, and their release of a new album on my favorite holiday, Halloween, this year made it perhaps the greatest day of my life (exaggerating only mildly for effect).
These two facts about me may seem unrelated and frankly were two interests I never particularly connected. Of course, they are certainly thematically similar (intricately beautiful, atmospheric architecture meet hymnal, ethereal musician!) but why connect these interests aside from the general note that I enjoy engaging with atmospheric, otherworldly things?
Enter a mindless Instagram scrolling session that culminated in me voraciously consuming everything on Florence’s page that she had posted regarding the upcoming album. As I looked through her posts, I stumbled on a post captioned “A month in Hudson” with a flower emoji. The first post was a beautiful tapestry with an ornately carved wooden railing below it. It looked vaguely familiar, but then again, I have seen many a tapestry and intricate wooden railing in my time. I kept scrolling, until I saw a vaguely familiar building silhouette and then a photo that stopped me in my tracks. I knew that staircase! I had taken that same picture!
Let me back up a little bit. Over the summer, while working in upstate New York, my dear friend Anabelle, who shares my love of historic houses, and I made a point to make day trips to different sites around the Vermont and upstate New York areas. Of course, in this quest, visiting Olana was non-negotiable. After hearing about it in Ken Turino’s “Revitalizing Historic House Museums” class, I knew I had to visit. So on one blustery mid-August day, Anabelle and I made the trek.
My dear friend and fellow Historic House lover Anabelle and I in a mirror at Olana
Olana, for anyone not familiar, is the gorgeous 250-acre site of Hudson River School mainstay Frederic Church. Built during the Victorian era, and taking on Asian and Middle Eastern inspiration, it is a pinnacle of 19th-century architecture and decorative arts. Frederic Church famously built the home as a place where he could draw from the beauty of the natural landscape. And certainly, both the landscape and the house itself are stunning, almost otherworldly. Olana, to me, is the epitome of that magical, back-in-time historic house feeling.
So the reason I recognized the staircase in Florence’s post is because it is Olana’s iconic staircase that for Church and family reportedly did double duty as a stage for performances. Carpeted in rich jewel tones, bejeweled with a yellow glass window, and garnished with a stuffed peacock and all the luxe trappings of Victorian wealth.
The author’s photo next to Florence’s photo of the same staircase.
In that moment, seeing that staircase, I had an incredibly cliché “Wow, she’s just like me!” moment. While I think there is very much a danger to the kind of parasocial relationships that come from assuming celebrities are “just like us” (no, Sabrina Carpenter working one shift at a coffee shop for publicity does not mean she understands what it is like to try to live off of a minimum wage service job, as much as I love her), I feel like so often I must justify my love for historic houses to non-history or non-museum people. “It’s just an old house” or “They all look the same” are constant refrains. It was refreshing and exciting to see that an artist I so respected and admired seemed to respect and admire something so close to my own heart. One of the songs on the new album is called “One of the Greats,” and to me, Florence visiting Olana is one of the great (artist)s visiting one of the great (historic house)s.
And I also think there is something beautiful about the story Florence’s visit to Olana tells about historic houses and artistic inspiration. Her pilgrimage continues Olana’s legacy of inspiration, starting with an artist taking inspiration from the landscape so that years later another artist could take inspiration from his landscape and a museum student could take inspiration from them both.
In “The Old Religion,” one of the songs she wrote during her time in Hudson, Florence writes:
And it’s the old religion humming in your veins
Some animal instinct starting up again
And I am wound so tightly, I hardly even breathe
You wonder why we’re hungry for some kind of release
I cannot know exactly what Florence meant by these lyrics. But I wonder if, in relation to her Olana visit, she is speaking of that deep pull that awakens inside when one visits a historic house. The deep connection to history, to lives lived before. Is the “release” she speaks of the personification of historical narratives waiting to be brought into the light, enclosed inside the walls of the house?
I may never know, but I now know that my visit to Olana and the deep-seated pull I feel will come to mind whenever I hear the song.