Byrdcliffe Art Colony

Byrdcliffe, taken from the middle names of Ralph and Jane, was fully built and operating by the summer of 1903. It had a metalworking shop, a pottery, a woodworking shop, a large studio for Bolton Brown’s art classes, a dairy barn, guest houses, a dormitory for students, and White Pines, the Whitehead’s own house. Unlike the vernacular architecture specific to the Hudson Valley, with its tidy white clapboard farmhouses, Byrdcliffe buildings resembled low rambling Swiss chalets characterized by their dark stained indigenous pine siding, gentle sloping roofs with wide overhangs, and ribbons of windows painted Byrdcliffe blue.