Sanctified Landscape

In Sanctified Landscape, David Schuyler recounts the story of America's idealization of the Hudson Valley in art and literature during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

David Schuyler is Arthur and Katherine Shadek Professor of the Humanities and American Studies at Franklin & Marshall College. He is the author of A City Transformed: Redevelopment, Race, and Suburbanization in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1940–1980; Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815–1852; and The New Urban Landscape: The Redefinition of City Form in Nineteenth-Century America and is an editor of The Frederick Law Olmsted Papers.

Schuyler has fashioned an absorbing account of the cultural milieu in which the Hudson Valley, a landscape of discrete villages, towns, and estates, was transformed into an iconic American region.... He adroitly foregrounds an abundant selection of contemporary sources testifying to the passionate sense of place these men exhibited in their professional and personal lives, as well as the influence most exerted, at least for a time, on the nation's aesthetic taste. Linking the Hudson Valley to early efforts of historic preservation and environmentalism, Schuyler commendably avoids the usual good-versus-evil narrative. The author's own sense of place is evident in illustrations and maps.

Over the past two decades or so, David Schuyler has established himself as one of the nation's preeminent students of American landscape and planning history. Whether in dealing with the transformative nature of the forces that created urban landscapes or assessments of the fathers of landscape architecture in America, namely Frederick Law Olmstead and Andrew Jackson Downing, Schuyler’s work has fashioned for us a deeper understanding and appreciation for the events, personalities, and forces that have made our environment what it is.... This is a fine and handsome book with lusciously reproduced paintings,wonderful reproductions of drawings and plans, and strong photographs. The quality reflects what university presses do better than most. In an era when many university presses are facing closure or are being downsized, a book of this nature is argument enough to embrace university presses for what they are: national treasures. And this book is a book about a national treasure itself, the mighty Hudson River. Thanks to David Schuyler and the Cornell University Press!

John Rowen:

In his capable and congenial history, David Schuyler, a humanities and American studies professor at Franklin and Marshall College, reminds us that the dance of change and permanence itself has been a constant throughout Catskill and Hudson Valley history.

Citation from the 2013 Ruth Emery Award Committee (Victorian Society in America):

We applaud the book's interdisciplinary investigation of portrayals of the Hudson River Valley. We experience the valley through the work of seminal figures like painter Thomas Cole, author Washington Irving, architect A. J. Downing as well as lesser-known but critical people like historian Benson John Lossing and artist Jervis McEntee. We learn that the Hudson River Valley is a place in the American imagination, as much myth as reality. Our heartiest congratulations on this impressive accomplishment!

Tom Lewis, Skidmore College, author of The Hudson: A History:

Sanctified Landscape is a wonderful book. David Schuyler has clearly thought at great length about the part that the Hudson Valley has played in American history. Schuyler shares compelling narratives about environmental change and Americans' response to it, the importance of historical memory, and the domestication of the Hudson Valley.