Former Summer Home of the Son of Artist G. Inness in NY

Chetolah - George Inness Jr. Estate, Cragsmoor New York

Date added: September 16, 2024

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Chetolah was the summer home of George Inness, Jr. It recalls the lavish lifestyle of a successful, turn-of-the-century artist at home in a well-established art colony.

The art colony at Cragsmoor developed in the 1870s and thrived until the 1930s, Until the railroad reached Ellenville in 1871, the area was a relatively isolated, agricultural region, disturbed only by the Delaware and Hudson Canal which carried coal from Pennsylvania coal fields to the Hudson River port of Kingston. The country outside the town was unaffected by the canal, but with the railroad providing easy transportation, local entrepreneurs began to capitalize on the beautiful scenery by opening guesthouses and small resorts. One particular settlement, Evansville, became popular with artists and developed into Cragsmoor, the first of several rural artists' colonies that attracted urban artists during the summer months. Genre artist Edward Lamston Henry and painter Eliza Pratt Greatorex began summering there in the 1870s. Other people attracted to the community were architect and explorer Frederick Dellenbangh and artists Helen M. Turner, Edward B. Gay, and Charles Curran.

Drawn by the spectacular, clear views of surrounding mountains and valleys, the artists painted landscapes, but more often than not, they used friends and local residents as models for portraits and genre paintings that were increasingly more popular with urban buyers than the landscapes that recalled the Hudson River School of painting. The summer people were also attracted by a lively and sophisticated social life. The financially comfortable artists, musicians, writers and their friends and families participated in activities ranging from picnics and teas to recitals and amateur theatricals, and they carefully recorded most of the events in the Cragsmoor Journal, the small newspaper they published during the summer months.

One of the people attracted to the community was George Inness, Jr. (1854-1926). The son of George Inness, the noted mid-nineteenth-century landscape painter, Inness, Jr. was born in Paris during one of his family's stays in Europe. From 1870 to 1875, he studied under his father in Rome and then in Paris. He returned to the United States, and after marrying Julia Roswell-Smith, the daughter of one of the founders of Scribner's Monthly and St. Nicholas magazines, he settled in New York City where he shared a studio with his father in 1878. In the late 1890's, he returned to Paris where he was awarded the Medaille de Troisieme Classe at the Salon showing of 1900. From then until his death, he apparently divided his time between homes in Montclair, New Jersey, Cragsmoor and Tarpon Springs, Florida.

According to an unpublished catalog assembled by his widow in 1929, George Inness, Jr., produced at least 482 oils and sketches during his career. Approximately 400 of these were finished oil paintings. Most of them were landscapes, the majority of which were of scenes in New York State (primarily in the Cragsmoor vicinity) and in Florida, where he maintained a winter home as early as the 1910s. There were some genre paintings among his work, and, particularly in the last few years of his life, there were some paintings incorporating religious themes into what he described as spiritual landscapes.

Upon the Inness family's return from their sojourn in Paris about 1900, Julia Roswell-Smith Inness (1853-1941) bought seventy acres of land near Cragsmoor from Kathleen Greatorex. Over the next few years, the Inness's continued to acquire property until they owned about 350 acres. The Greatorex residence had been named Chetolah, reportedly an Indian word for "love," and the Inness's retained the name when they built their new home.

Inness and his son-in-law Howard Greenley (1874-1963) designed the buildings on the estate. A native of Ithaca, New York, and a Trinity College graduate, Greenley was married to Elizabeth Inness, one of two Inness daughters. He worked for Carrere and Hastings and Hill and Green before going to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts; he received his diploma in 1901 and returned to New York. One of his first projects upon his return must have been to assist Inness in the design of Chetolah. From 1902 to 1935, Greenley operated his own architectural firm in New York City and designed residences, hotels, office buildings and schools. He was president of the Architectural League of New York from 1921 to 1923, and in 1947, the League presented him with their President's Medal.

Work began on the house in 1901; J.R. Jones of Brooklyn was the contractor on the project, which is said to have cost close to one million dollars. Outbuildings included two residences for the Inness daughters, a barn, garage, tennis house, studio, greenhouse, and gatehouse. The tower spanning the entrance road and the shingled addition on the log cabin were also built about this time, (The original date of construction of the log cabin is unknown),

Inness's residence is an eclectic blend of styles and decorative features that combine to form an entirely unique building. The house's asymmetrical and rambling plan and the variety of its stone, shingled and stuccoed building materials shows the strong influence of the Queen Anne style. The abundant classical detailing found in the numerous round-arched doors and windows and the composite columns and pilasters appear to show the influence of Greenley's recently completed studies at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. The plan of the house and the varied, rough-textured building materials found throughout the building combine with the paneling and ornate columns and pilasters to form an interesting combination of the rustic and formal, but the formal is clearly predominant. The lifestyle of the wealthy and established artists at Cragsmoor was one of extreme sophistication, and the detailing of Chetolah demonstrates this.

The other buildings on the estate are less formal, but they also show the eclectic tastes of Inness and his architect son-in-law. The smaller residences exhibit the same varied building materials that are seen in the main house, but the classical features in these much more modest residences show elements that relate more to the simpler Colonial Revival style. The gatehouse and observation tower, both constructed of stone and shingles, display a more rustic feeling than the two residences and relate more closely to the Queen Anne style.

After George Inness, Jr.'s death in 1926, Mrs. Inness sold the property to August and Dorothy Bellanca. In 1936, the newly established Daughters of Mary, Health of the Sick, Inc, bought the estate. The nuns used the grounds and residence as the Motherhouse and Novitiate for the teaching and medical missionary order which trained nuns to work at missions in Guatemala and on Okinawa. Between their purchase of the property and the dissolution of the order in 1970, they added the substantial, two-story extension to one of the smaller residences and made numerous alterations to the main house. The two residences, tower and gatehouse are now all privately owned, but the Archdiocese of New York continues to own the main house and its small support structures. The Archdiocese has offered to sell those buildings and some surrounding land to a group of residents who are interested in maintaining it as an arts center.

Most of the outlying buildings at Chetolah are in good condition, but the main house and its smaller support structures are being threatened by both neglect and vandalism. Nevertheless, local residents and artists who continue to be attracted to the area are trying to acquire the site and make it available to the public. Like the outlying buildings, the main house and smaller buildings retain their decorative detailing.

The main house at Chetolah is most comparable to Hi-lo-ha and the Pines, two of the major residences at Byrdcliffe, the art colony developed in Woodstock, New York by Ralph Radcliffe Whitehead in the early 1900's. Those two buildings are large rambling structures which, like Chetolah, combine some classical features with elements from the Queen Anne style. Unlike Chetolah, though, they are influenced also by the Western Stick Style and are less formal than the Inness house.

Site Description

The George Inness, Jr. estate, historically known as Chetolah, is located about 65 miles northwest of New York City near the hamlet of Cragsmoor in the town of Wawarsing. The main house, and ten support structures are on about 115 acres of land. The buildings, surrounded by a large terraced garden, lawns, woods and a man-made pond, are located on a plateau on the southeast side of the Shawangunk Mountain range and have panoramic views of forested and cleared mountains and valleys.

The large, rambling, two-and-a-half story, eclectic style residence has a hipped, metal-sheathed roof with both shed type and eyelid dormers. The exterior wall surfaces are either stuccoed or shingled. The main entrance is on the north elevation. The porte-cochere on that elevation and the porch on the northeast corner of the house have columns with entasis atop stone plinths. The one-story gallery section on the west end has large, cast cement delarobia and a patterned cornice with smaller medallions. The south elevation faces a large terraced garden and an expansive view of mountains and valleys. On this side, the basement is raised a full story and is accessible by numerous round-arched, rustic, stone openings which lead into a walkway that extends across the entire elevation; the basement itself has doors with round arches. There is a porch on the first story level and a larger one on the second. The garden has stone terraces, gazebo-like structures on each side and masonry statues of lion's and bull's heads.

On the interior, the entrance hall has elaborate, fluted, composite columns and a paneled ceiling. The two rooms flanking the hall have wainscotting, paneled friezes and mantels of rock-faced stone with glazed bricks atop. Another one of the south-facing rooms has pilasters which are similar to the columns in the hall and a mantel of stone and carved wood. The last south-facing room is much simpler and is undecorated architecturally except for wainscotting. All of these rooms have paneled ceilings like the one in the hall. The skylighted gallery at the western end of the house is located a half level below the central block. The kitchen and service area is found in the eastern section of the building. There are two stairways leading to the second floor; the central room on the north side of that floor has a pressed tin ceiling and cornice. Throughout the house, walls are either plastered or paneled. The floors are wood, but some have been covered with linoleum. In 1936, when the residence was converted to institutional use, many of the upstairs rooms were divided, some of the wooden floors were covered and the walls of the gallery were paneled.

There are ten support structures on the estate. The shingled and stone greenhouse structure is attached to the east end of the garden and has round-arched openings; its central section has collapsed. The one-story, shingled studio building is northeast of the main house. Overlooking the same mountains and valleys as the main house, the building has two small rooms and a large studio area with a fireplace and interior balcony. A porch extends across much of the south elevation. The tennis house, a small, one-story, two-room, shingled building, lies to the north of the main house. To the west is a large, two-level garage with a truncated hipped roof and cupola. Besides having garage space, the building has three work rooms and houses the original gas generator that powered the gas lights which illuminated the residence when it was built.

Two residences, a log cabin, stone tower and gatehouse are further to the west of the main house. Near the garage, situated on the edge of a bluff, is a stone, stuccoed and shingled residence. The basement and first-story levels are either stone or stuccoed; the upper stories are shingled. The gabled roofs have gable returns and the cornices are decorated with either rake board or small dentils. The west end of the building has received a large, two-story, gable-roofed, aluminum=sided addition. A second residence is located on a lower bluff. This shingled house has a hipped roof, stone foundation and single, paired and triple 6/1 windows. A broad porch with square columns stretches across most of the south-facing facade. Immediately to the east of this house is a one-and-a-half story log cabin with a two-story, shingled addition. All three of these buildings face south and command the same panoramic views as the main house and studio building.

Between the two smaller residences, spanning the estate's original entrance road, is a stone and shingled tower. The stone base has round arches with keystones and the stone cornice is bracketed. A ladder leads to an observation room in the shingled area directly under the roof; this room, like the residences, has magnificent views of the surrounding region. At the entrance to the estate is the one-and-a-half story, stone and shingled gatehouse. The building's most notable feature is its rounded north elevation which forms the base of a tower that has a conical roof

The buildings on the estate are in various stages of deterioration. The main house is structurally sound, but it has been the victim of vandalism. Nevertheless, most of the important decorative detailing remains. The garden remains in fair condition, but some of the statues have been destroyed, and the steps are deteriorating rapidly. The tennis house and garage are in fair condition. The studio building is intact, but the porch and the foundation, which is built into a hill, is collapsing. The greenhouse is in ruins. The outlying buildings are also in various states of repair. The two residences and gatehouse are in good condition, but the log cabin is deteriorated. The stone tower is in fair condition, but the observation room is deteriorated.