Johnson Hall State Historic Site’s 250th Anniversary Lecture Series, marking the building of the historic Johnson Hall estate, concludes on Saturday, October 5. Through October, on the first Saturday of each month, lectures that focus on the period surrounding the 1763 building of the home have been held at Johnson Hall.
Due to continued historic restoration on the mansion’s back entrance, the October 5 lecture will be held in the East Stonehouse, beginning at 11am, where seating will be limited. Refreshments will be available following the lecture. Regular public tours will be available after 1:00pm.
On Saturday, October 5, Judy Anderson will present “Georgian Opulence – in the Wilderness, above the Hudson, and on the Seacoast”. Anderson will explore the architecture and interior of Johnson Hall in relation to Schuyler Mansion, the van Rensselaer Manor House and the Jeremiah Lee Mansion, focusing in particular on the textiles, wall coverings and decorative finishes that would have embellished these 18th century houses, including bold and exuberant block-printed and hand-painted mural papers wallpapers. Those rare and striking wall coverings would have created some of the most opulent interiors of their era.
Signed copies of Anderson’s Glorious Splendor: The 18th Century Wallpapers in the Jeremiah Lee Mansion will be available for purchase following the lecture.
Judy Anderson is a social, cultural and architectural historian and lecturer who served as curator at the Jeremiah Lee Mansion in Marblehead, MA, as well as at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and at Los Angeles-area art museums. She has lectured widely on the Lee Mansion, Marblehead architecture, and early American furniture and decorative arts, and taught a community architecture course. She writes and conducts architectural walking tours of Marblehead, which retains more than two-thirds of nearly 550 houses that stood at the time of the Revolution, developed an audio walking tour, and is currently planning an educational architecture website for the town.
Johnson Hall will close for the 2013 season on Sunday, October 13. For more information on Johnson Hall, contact (518) 762 – 8712, visit the Site’s Facebook page, or visit www.nysparks.com.
