by Sandra Steingraber, SEHN senior scientist and writer in residence

Each month in this column, we examine unintended consequences.

Usually these are bad. As when a chemical poison called DDT was deployed during World War II to halt typhus and malaria epidemics among U.S. troops in both European and Pacific theaters of conflict.

That sort of worked. But then, after the war was over, the leftover stockpiles were re-branded for crop-dusting, mothproofing baby blankets, and sending convoys of DDT fogger trucks into Long Island suburbs.

The result was dead birds, convulsing housecats, contaminated soil, the evolution of pesticide-resistant insects, the book Silent Spring, and, a generation later, increased rates of breast cancer.

This month we look at an unintended good consequence. Namely, how a shrine to a mid-19th Century style of painting was subsequently leveraged, one century later, into multiple environmental victories and one precedent-setting court decision thanks to a remarkable activist named Franny Reese.

***

Frederic Church, the son of a wealthy father and the descendent of Puritan pioneers, was, by any standard, a man of privilege. By age 18, Church had chosen art as his career and was mentored by the nation’s leading landscape painter Thomas Cole in Catskill, New York, on the west bank of the Hudson River.

Together, Cole and Church founded an artistic movement known as the Hudson River School, which, in a time before photography, attempted to capture the beauty and panoramic sublimeness of the American wilderness, with all its purple mountains’ majesty and botanical detail. No need for human subjects. Reverent observation of the landscape itself was the point.

By 1872, Church was the sought-after artist of his day and had set up shop across the river from his teacher Thomas Cole in a hilltop estate outside the city of Hudson that he helped design. He called it Olana, which is an ancient Persian word referring to a fortified house, and he incorporated within it all kinds of Orientalist motifs drawn from Persian, Chinese, Indian, and Moorish designs and architectural styles.

*The Persian-inspired Olana estate overlooking the Hudson River Valley where Frederic Church (1826-1900) painted his famous landscapes. (Photo credit: Sandra Steingraber)*

Chinese tiles abound. The stained-glass window above the front door bids visitors welcome in Arabic, and the fireplace mantel and doorframes are stenciled with what looks to be Farsi script. Actually—as the docent who led my group tour through the lavishly decorated rooms admitted—those swirly lines are just a design element that imitates the exotic look of the Perso-Arabic alphabet.

Hmmm. Apparently, Church’s insistence on authenticity and realism in his portrayal of the American landscape did not extend to the representation of non-Western cultures. (See also Edward Said, Orientalism, 1978.)

Meanwhile, on the sprawling grounds outside his home, Church entirely resculpted the landscape to create three-dimensional compositions that were pleasing to his eye (native meadows, a fern garden, a hand-dug lake), and that blocked any view of encroaching industrial development unaligned with his vision of the grandeur of the American wilderness.

From his studio where he painted, Church had unobstructed views into three other states—Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Vermont—a long swathe of the Hudson River, and the entirety of the Catskill range, including the rounded dome beloved by all the Hudson River School painters: Storm King Mountain.

*The Hudson River and Catskill Mountains at sunset, looking toward the village of Athens, in 2025. (Photo credit: Sandra Steingraber)*

Keep that particular landmark in mind.

But first let’s fast forward to 1964 when Church’s reputation had slipped into obscurity and his last immediate heir had died. Olana was falling into ruin, the remaining heirs were seeking to liquidate it, and a citizen campaign led by art historians began urgently fundraising to restore Olana to glory, with its viewscape and original furnishings intact. We’ll come back to this.

***

Born in Manhattan in 1917, Franny Reese studied literature, playwriting, and art at Barnard and Yale. Then she married a law professor and moved to her husband’s family home on the east bank of the Hudson River, 50 miles downstream from Olana.

In 1962, Con Edison proposed to site a power plant on Storm King Mountain. In 1963, Reese recruited five of her friends and founded a grassroots environmental group called Scenic Hudson whose intention was to stop it.

The Scenic Hudson activists had lots of concerns. Three of them had to do with water. A pipeline serving the plant would be sited close to the Catskill Aqueduct that carries drinking water to New York City. Further, the bedrock of the Hudson Valley is exceptionally porous, raising worries about groundwater contamination. And then there was the striped bass in the Hudson River itself, which was a mainstay of commercial fisheries.

Moreover, they noted, the iconic face of Storm King Mountain, visible from Olana, would be disfigured.

What Reese and her five recruits lacked was legal standing to make their arguments. So, first they needed to win a huge victory in the courts. That came in 1965 with a federal court ruling that forced the Federal Power Commission to allow public participation in the power plant decision-making process.

Before the so-called Scenic Hudson decision, only the developers of environmentally damaging projects and their licensing agencies had a seat at the table.

The Scenic Hudson decision would become a precedent-setting case for environmental law. By acknowledging that natural beauty and the public’s enjoyment of it have intrinsic value that must be considered along with a project’s potential profits, and by forcing the Commission to restart the licensing process to allow public participation, the ruling paved the way for the National Environmental Policy Act, as well as state-based legislation, which together codified the principle of public participation into federal and state law.

If you’ve ever submitted a public comment or stood up at a public hearing and stated your opinion about, say, a proposed pipeline, power plant, or trash incinerator in your community, you have Franny Reese to thank.

Note that Con Edison finally withdrew its proposal as part of negotiated settlement in December 1980.

In sum, six Hudson Valley activists, led by a woman with no formal scientific or legal training, fought for two years to change the law, fought for 15 more years to beat Goliath, and so saved a mountain.

Never give up.

***

But the story gets even better. Let’s look back upstream.

At about same time Franny and her gang won big in the courts, the art historians, with an assist from Jackie Kennedy, succeeded in getting matching funds from the state of New York to purchase Frederic Church’s beloved Olana and turn it into a state park and historical site.

Some of that money was raised by giving walking tours of Olana to members of the public, and one of those members who took the tour in 1966 was Loretta Simon, an art teacher in the Hudson City School District who went on to serve as a trustee in the village of Athens, directly across the river from Hudson.

Olana impressed her deeply and she felt a personal connection: one of Simon’s own third-grade students was the great-grandson of Thomas Cole.

Seven years later, in 1973, the Power Authority of the State of New York (PASNY) announced plans to build three power plants, including a coal and nuclear plant, in the village of Athens. A new grassroots group, Citizens to Preserve the Hudson Valley, sprang up to fight all three proposals.

Thanks to the Scenic Hudson decision of 1965, public hearings were now an integral part of the process. As an Athens Village Trustee, Simon signed up to speak. Here is her extraordinary account what happened next:

I had prepared an opposition statement which I was to read on behalf of the Village government. When I heard the PASNY presenters say the nuclear power plant would fit right into the landscape, I tore up my prepared statement and said that anyone who thought that power plants would fit into the landscape didn’t know what they were talking about….

Meanwhile, Al Butzel [attorney from the Storm King Mountain case] called me to talk more about the impacts on the view from Olana…[and] we developed our case. We would base our arguments against the plant on historic, visual, and socio-economic impacts….

*Above the Clouds at Sunrise,* Frederic Church (1826-1900). Public domain.

And here’s where Frederic Church’s landscape paintings showcasing the splendor of the Hudson River Valley—and making unthinkable its desecration—played a heroic role:

One of the most memorable days at the hearings for me was when we all trouped over to the State Museum where there happened to be an exhibit of Hudson River School paintings, including Frederic Church’s view from Olana in the winter. It showed clearly the exact site where PASNY proposed to build the nuclear plant with its cooling towers and attendant plumes.

The plumes would have been the largest and most visible on clear winter days, just like the one Church had depicted in his painting,

When it was the turn of the intervening parties to present their cases, the briefs from the State and Federal agencies, Greene County and its municipalities, and the non-profit groups all showed significant opposition to the nuclear plant. The NRC testimony declared Olana a national treasure. PASNY withdrew its application. The hearings were over, and our seven-year fight ended….

My husband and I still walk at Olana and stop to gaze at the view to the south, remembering how we once could have lost it. And now I have time to do my own paintings of that view.

And that’s how art, law, and activism once saved New York.

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Repercussion Section: How Franny Reese and Landscape Painting Saved New York