Arts and Crafts Movement

1909 Lake George Club Nominated to Historic Register

August 10, 2026 by Anthony F. Hall Leave a Comment

The destruction of the Lake George Yacht Club’s building in Basin Bay in 1896 was as much a loss to Lake George’s architectural history as the demolition of the Gilded Age-
era mansions along Millionaire’s Row.

Today, only a few privately-owned properties on Lake George are protected through the State and National Registers of Historic Places. New York State’s Board for Historic Preservation is attempting to remedy that deficit. [Read more…] about 1909 Lake George Club Nominated to Historic Register

American Art History & A Village Named Broadway

March 6, 2026 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

A chronology of cultural interactions between Europe and the United States is a narrative about identity formation. It highlights the transfer of the American artist from a pilgrim to the shrines of European genius to an active participant in redefining the boundaries of art and literature.

Increased transatlantic travel during the 1880s forged close cross-cultural exchanges between the United States and Europe. Many American artists visited European cities for study at their great art institutions, to frequent museums and exhibitions, and copy the Masters. [Read more…] about American Art History & A Village Named Broadway

A Wayne County Historic Cobblestone House Suffers From Neglect

February 27, 2026 by Editorial Staff 1 Comment

Cobblestone construction is arguably the most unique aspect of the architectural heritage of Western New York: of the 1,054 identified cobblestone structures in North America, 855 (81%) are located within eighty miles of Rochester, with over one hundred each in Wayne, Orleans, Monroe, and Ontario Counties alone.

The manifestation of a unique confluence of glacial processes and skilled masons remaining in the region after its canal building boom, each cobblestone structure — though perhaps easy to overlook in isolation on the modern landscape — is a treasure testifying to the power of craftsmanship. [Read more…] about A Wayne County Historic Cobblestone House Suffers From Neglect

Philistine Elbert Hubbard, Roycroft, and the Arts & Crafts Movement

February 26, 2026 by Bill Orzell Leave a Comment

The principles of beauty and artistic taste and its appreciation in nature and art are very personal, yet aesthetics can often be shared. During the nineteenth century the industrial revolution, first in Europe and later North America, left a dearth of creative aesthetics among inhabitants. Many felt the impersonal civilization, where industrialization forced movement from agrarian societies to urban social life, stripped creativity and aesthetic expression.

Like the industrial revolution itself, what would become an international trend originated in England and would be spread to British colonies and former colonies of the Empire, with origins in the 1850s. This was an arts and crafts movement, spurred on by those with both a grasp of mechanical design and a gift for expressing themselves in writing and lecture, such as John Ruskin, Thomas Carlyle and William Morris. Art of pre-industrial times, produced by the skills of craftsmen, were championed and embraced by the movement. [Read more…] about Philistine Elbert Hubbard, Roycroft, and the Arts & Crafts Movement

19 Nominations to State and National Registers of Historic Places

December 15, 2025 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Nineteen properties and districts have been recommended for inclusion in the State and National Registers of Historic Places. The nominations include an office building with a pioneering design in energy efficiency in Buffalo, an Arts and Crafts church on Staten Island, a new historic district in Essex County, and the Cortland home of a leader in New York’s Women’s Club Movement.

The nominations were reviewed on December 3, 2025, at a meeting of the New York State Board for Historic Preservation. [Read more…] about 19 Nominations to State and National Registers of Historic Places

Progressive Era Arts and Crafts Communities

October 21, 2025 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

In response to the trauma of industrialization and urbanization in the late-nineteenth century, the Arts and Crafts Movement took America by storm. Art exhibits, workshops, and societies dedicated to handicraft, worker dignity, and the production of beautiful art for the masses sprouted from California to Boston.

The Handcrafted Utopia: Arts and Crafts Communities in America’s Progressive Era (Couper Press, 2025) examines these utopian communities in the Arts and Crafts Movement. [Read more…] about Progressive Era Arts and Crafts Communities

Saratoga Race Course: An Architectural History

July 9, 2025 by Bill Orzell 9 Comments

A day at the races at Saratoga Race Course is one of the highly anticipated ways to spend a summer day. For fans of the thoroughbred horse, there is plenty of sport, yet a real pleasure is visiting the facility itself.

The grounds have a special heritage fostered across the years and generations, which is easily perceived, and a pleasure to combine with a visitor’s personal experiences forming an emotional connection to that communal place of competition. [Read more…] about Saratoga Race Course: An Architectural History

Saratoga Springs’ Indian Encampments

March 5, 2025 by Bill Orzell Leave a Comment

The tourism fostered at Saratoga Springs by the mineral waters and baths spawned the spectacle of thoroughbred racing during the nineteenth century and also a clubhouse which operated as a casino. They were exciting diversions for those visiting to take the “water cure.”

With so many tourists at the numerous hotels and boarding houses by virtue of the convenient rail connections, another attraction of sorts was fostered, Indian Encampments which functioned much like carnivals. [Read more…] about Saratoga Springs’ Indian Encampments

Craft Becomes Art: 1930s Upstate NY Highway Shops Created the U.S. Craft Movement

November 6, 2023 by Bruce Austin 1 Comment

At the very worst economic time ever experienced, in 1929 an upstate New York petroleum merchant initiates a shop making and selling discretionary products for a consumer market characterized by 25 percent unemployment.

A few years later, and 15 miles down the same highway from the first, the same optimist opens a second shop. Improbably, the business idea achieves traction. [Read more…] about Craft Becomes Art: 1930s Upstate NY Highway Shops Created the U.S. Craft Movement

Arts and Crafts Movement in America’s Northeast

April 25, 2023 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Artists and architects in America’s Northeast were significant contributors to the burgeoning Arts and Crafts Movement of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, producing work that is still keenly studied. [Read more…] about Arts and Crafts Movement in America’s Northeast

Sadakichi Hartmann: A German-Asian-American Artist’s Struggle for Identity

February 9, 2023 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

In response to the attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066 authorizing the founding of a new federal agency, the War Relocation Authority (WRA), which began forcibly removing Japanese Americans from the West Coast and relocate them to isolated inland areas. Around 120,000 people were detained in remote camps for the remainder of the Second World War. [Read more…] about Sadakichi Hartmann: A German-Asian-American Artist’s Struggle for Identity

Val-Kill Industries & The American Arts and Crafts Movement

October 19, 2022 by Holley Snaith 2 Comments

In 1926, Eleanor Roosevelt convened with three of her closest friends, Caroline O’Day, Marion Dickerman, and Nancy Cook, to discuss the probability of a bold new venture. The four women, all active in New York’s Democratic Party, agreed to open a workshop that specialized in the production of Colonial Revival furniture.

Their business would be conducted on the Roosevelts’ Val-Kill property in Hyde Park, Dutchess County, NY and appropriately named “Val-Kill Industries.” Two years prior, Franklin D. Roosevelt built a quaint Dutch Colonial cottage on the property for Eleanor, Marion, and Nancy. This came to be called the “Stone Cottage,” and a more industrial building was constructed for the workshop. [Read more…] about Val-Kill Industries & The American Arts and Crafts Movement

Elverhoj: The Arts and Crafts Colony at Milton-on-Hudson

October 3, 2022 by Guest Contributor 1 Comment

Among the trio of turn-of-the-century New York State Arts and Crafts communities, Elverhoj is the least-well-known. The recent publication of Elverhoj: The Arts and Crafts Colony at Milton-on-Hudson (Black Dome Press, 2022; distributed by RIT Press), written by William B. Rhoads and Leslie Melvin, resolves the oversight.

Roycroft, in East Aurora (Erie County), and Byrdcliffe, in Woodstock, both began earlier than Elverhoj. Previously, each was the subject of a definitive scholarly text.

Elverhoj was established by Anders Andersen and Johannes Morton on the picturesque west shore of the Hudson River in 1912. Its Danish name loosely translates to “hill of the fairies.” Persisting until the 1930s, well outside of the Arts and Crafts period, it fell victim to the Depression eventually filing for bankruptcy like so many enterprises. [Read more…] about Elverhoj: The Arts and Crafts Colony at Milton-on-Hudson

Traveling Art: Gustav Stickley’s 1903 Exhibitions

September 9, 2022 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

Contrary to conventional wisdom, the very first modern traveling art exhibition was not the three-venue, 1913 New York City “Armory Show.” Instead, and a decade earlier, Syracuse and Rochester, New York hosted an important art exhibit.

The novelty of a traveling art exhibition in 1903 is matched by the surprising reason it occurred: a furniture maker’s business deal with an educational institution. [Read more…] about Traveling Art: Gustav Stickley’s 1903 Exhibitions

Socialism, Greenwich Village & ‘The Masses’

June 28, 2022 by Jaap Harskamp 3 Comments

The socio-political and economic turmoil of the early twentieth century transformed American society. Between the conclusion of the Civil War and the end of the First World War, the country went from being a predominantly rural farming society to an urban industrial one. [Read more…] about Socialism, Greenwich Village & ‘The Masses’

Nancy Cunard, Modernism and the Private Press Movement

September 29, 2021 by Jaap Harskamp 1 Comment

The history of the modern private press can be said to have started in early 1891 with William Morris’s foundation of the Kelmscott Press at 16 Upper Mall, Hammersmith, and the publication of his own work The Story of the Glittering Plain.

There had been forerunners of course. Horace Walpole’s Strawberry Hill Press, established in June 1757, set a precedent by producing splendid books, pamphlets, and ephemera, but it was Morris who succeeded in establishing a cost-effective press for high quality publications. His initiative gave birth to a host of similar undertakings. He initiated the Private Press Movement which was closely associated with the rise of modernist ideas. Morris also had a remarkable following in New York. [Read more…] about Nancy Cunard, Modernism and the Private Press Movement

The First Red Scare: Socialist Suppression and Explosive Anarchism

July 26, 2020 by Jaap Harskamp Leave a Comment

In the course of the nineteenth century, powerful and relatively stable explosives were developed. Dynamite became synonymous with radicalism and the moniker “dynamitist” preceded that of terrorist.

On September 16, 1920, a bomb was set off on a busy corner of Manhattan’s financial district. At 12:01 pm, a horse-drawn wagon concealing 100 pounds of dynamite was detonated. The blast killed thirty-eight people. [Read more…] about The First Red Scare: Socialist Suppression and Explosive Anarchism

State Museum Acquires Woodstock Art Colony Artwork

May 22, 2017 by Editorial Staff Leave a Comment

The New York State Museum has announced the acquisition of a significant collection of artwork of the historic Woodstock Art Colony. The collection includes 1,500 paintings, works on paper, sculptures, and archival material and represents more than 170 artists from the early 20th century art colony in Woodstock.

Long before the famous music event in 1969, Woodstock was home to what is considered America’s first intentional year-round arts colony: the historic Woodstock Art Colony, founded in 1902. Its artists have been the focus of collector and donor Arthur Anderson for three decades, resulting in the largest comprehensive art collection of its type. [Read more…] about State Museum Acquires Woodstock Art Colony Artwork

Arts and Crafts Movement

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