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PROPOSED CELL TOWER
WILL DESTROY PRICELESS
CULTURAL TREASURE BY CHANGING
VIEW OF LAKE GEORGE'S SHORE
Dramatic Shoreline
& Mountain Landscape -- Unchanged Since 19th Century -- Is
Subject of Hundreds of Hudson River School of Art Masterpiece
Paintings
For more information:
John F. Sheehan, Communications Director
518-432-1770 (w)
518-441-1340 (cell)
Released, Thursday, July 8, 2004
See the
Council's Advertisement on the Proposed Cell Tower in the Lake
George's Local Newspaper.
FORT ANN, N.Y. - The Adirondack
Council will call upon the Adirondack Park Agency today to reject
an application by NEXTEL Partners Inc., to build a 114-foot fake
pine tree cell tower on the eastern shore of Lake George, the
scene depicted in hundreds of world-famous Hudson River School
of Art paintings by American masters.
"Despite the passing of more than 100 years since many of
these priceless works were created, little about the landscape
of Pilot Knob and Buck Mountain have changed since the days of
Thomas Cole and Winslow Homer," said Adirondack Council
Executive Director Brian L. Houseal. "The scenes depicted
in their unique, stirring, romantic styles are still visible
today from Bolton Landing, Diamond Point, the islands and the
lake itself. Even Georgia O'Keeffe - a longtime resident of Lake
George -- captured the lake's unspoiled eastern shore.
"Placing a steel and plastic cell tower above the tops of
every tree in the forest on Pilot Knob would be like painting
a beard and mustache on the Mona Lisa," Houseal said. "You
can dress a tower like a tree, but that doesn't make it a tree.
It's a Franken-pine, a tower pretending to be a tree.
"Since the tower site is located in a mixed hardwood forest,
a 114-foot tower will dwarf the surrounding hardwoods, as well
as the surrounding white pines - the tallest trees in the Park,"
he explained. "Any tower would be much more visible in the
fall, winter and spring when the leaves are sparse, than it appears
to be on the summertime computer-simulations provided to the
Adirondack Park Agency."
Houseal cited a few examples of the hundreds of famous Hudson
River School paintings depicting Pilot Knob and Buck Mountain:
A Showery Day, Lake George (ca. 1869, by John Frederick
Kensett, 1816-1872, in the collection of the Memorial Art Gallery,
Rochester, NY).
Lake George (1869, by Kensett; in the collection of the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Manhattan).
Buck Mountain, Lake George (1894, by David Johnson, in
the collection of the NY Historical Society).
The Boating Party (ca. 1890, by Alfred Thomas Bricher,
1837-1908, in the collection of the Adirondack Museum).
A Sudden Storm, Lake George (ca. 1877, by Sanford Robinson
Gifford, in the collection of the National Gallery of Art, Washington,
DC. See below.).
Black Mountain from the Harbor Islands, Lake George, N.Y.
(1875, by Asher B. Durand, in the collection of the New York
Historical Society).
Lake George (ca. 1890, by Jacob Francis Cropsey).
Houseal noted that the Sanford
R. Gifford painting is part of a major retrospective of Gifford's
landscapes currently on display in the West Building of the National
Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The Metropolitan Museum of
Art in New York City helped the National Gallery organize the
exhibition with the assistance of the Henry Luce Foundation.
"The landscape around Pilot Knob is an American icon,"
Houseal said. "It is as American as apple pie and baseball.
It is as important a part of New York's contributions to world
history as the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island. If we allow
a cell tower to rise above the trees on this site, we have failed
our children and grandchildren and we ought to be ashamed of
ourselves."
The Adirondack Council's mission is to ensure the ecological
integrity and wild character of the Adirondack Park. The Council
is a privately funded, not-for-profit organization that carries
out its mission through research, education, advocacy and legal
action.
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