October, 1909 
AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 389 
*Tis a real city of the forest 
The Byrdcliffe Colony of Arts and Crafts 
By Poultney Bigelow 
Photographs Copyrighted by Jessie Tarbox Beals 
“FUGE MAGNA! Licet sub paupere tecto 
Reges et regum vita praecurere amicos!” 
—Horace, Epistle X, to his friend Fuscus, 2000 years ago. 
Free translation: “Don’t put on too much style. The right sort of 
girl will prefer a straw hat on your head to a golden crown on any 
others!” 
HE provocation to this poor effort of mine 
consists in a set of admirable pictures 
made by Miss Jessie Tarbox Beals, of New 
York, and a flattering invitation from the 
editors to write something worthy of these 
illustrations. From Ralph Radcliffe White- 
head or his wondrous wife I have no per- 
mission, much less from Birge Harrison, and in these lines 
I am deliberately jeopardizing my friendship with them in 
the higher hope of doing something for the encouragement 
of real living art in my country. Before this manuscript 
can see the light I shall be on my way to the Far East, es- 
caping from merited censure, and yet I venture to recom- 
mend my readers to place themselves in communication with 
the heads of this remarkable colony if they are interested in 
the success of this work as is the writer of these indiscretions. 
To him who motors, or drives, or bikes, or tramps in the 
southern slopes of the Catskills no more delightful objective 
can be imagined than the neighborhood of Woodstock, in 
Ulster County, New York, which lies maybe a dozen miles 
westward from the Hudson River, and not to be confused 
with a dozen other Woodstocks of lesser charm. 
To this neighborhood came a pupil of the great Ruskin 
some years ago, and here he determined to plant the seed of 
truth in handicraft, to found in this most illiterate county of 
the Empire State a colony devoted to the artistic work which 
make us to-day honor the name of Medici and medieval 
Florence. With his American wife, herself an artist, he 
bought a large tract of forest and here within the last five 
years has arisen one bungalow after another, each the home 
of artists in one form or another, painter or sculptor, weaver 
or dyer, metal-worker or wood-carver, in short, here is a city 
of the forest where every tree is a soul in sympathy with the 
workers under its branches. 
You already detect my allusion to Ralph Radcliffe White- 
head. 
The idly curious are not invited, and, thank God, auto- 
mobiles are barred as well; also, all merely mechanical forms 
of progress, intellectual or otherwise. 
In this atmosphere does our eminent landscape-painter, 
Birge Harrison, conduct his summer school made up of sixty 
or more members of the Art Students’ League. He has a 
beautiful home here on the edges of the colony proper and 
his students of both sexes are an immense addition to the 
social gaiety of Byrdcliffe, for such is the name of this sylvan 
paradise. 
Is not the very name of Birge Harrison’s retreat an in- 
vitation to close one’s life in sylvan savagery, Huckleberry 
Fen? And his post-office is Bearsville! Do not we instinct- 
ively call up visions of ancient sages communing with God 
in the jungles of India or in those sacred solitudes of Egypt 
where Osiris came upon the earth? To see Birge Harrison 
in the midst of his disciples, the sacred phalanx of white 
umbrellas and studio aprons, one might imagine a spirit 
from a higher world come to this stony segment of a Philis- 
tine county to do a labor of love as Krishna did for truth in 
his time. May the life of this noble man long be spared is 
the prayer of his pupils, for while many are ready to fill a 
pulpit on Fifth Avenue, few there are so eager to preach in 
the wilderness. 
The artist is your true man of the people, for he fears no 
comparison with any man—he fears no revolution of goy- 
ernment, for any political change would leave him still 
amongst the masters. 
Therefore, when each Saturday night the colony has its 
dance in the casino or gymnasium, no dress-suit is permitted 
on the floor; young men and maidens disport themselves in 
such studio or working-dress as suits their complexion or 
purse, and such dancing as at Byrdclitfe is not to be found 
anywhere else this side of the Hungarian Danube. 
