Yaddo Gardens Photo Print

The "Pergola" at Yaddo Gardens in Saratoga Springs, NY. Originally owned by the Trask family, the estate was purchased in 1881 by the financier Spencer Trask and his wife, the writer Katrina Trask. The first mansion on the property burned down in 1893, and the Trasks then built the current house. Yaddo is a neologism invented by one of the Trask children and was meant to rhyme with shadow. Artists' colony In 1900, after the premature deaths of the Trasks' four children, Spencer Trask decided to turn the estate into an artist's retreat as a gift to his wife. He did this with the financial assistance of philanthropist George Foster Peabody. The first artists moved in in 1926. The success of Yaddo encouraged Spencer and Katrina later to donate land for a working women's retreat center as well, known as Wiawaka Holiday House, at the request of Mary Wiltsie Fuller. Yaddo has hosted more than 6,000 artists,[4] including Hannah Arendt, Newton Arvin, Milton Avery, James Baldwin, Leonard Bernstein, Truman Capote, John Cheever, Aaron Copland, Kenneth Fearing, Jonathan Franzen, Daniel Fuchs, Steve Giovinco, Philip Guston, Daron Hagen, Ruth Heller, Patricia Highsmith, Langston Hughes, Ted Hughes, Alfred Kazin, Ulysses Kay, Stanley Kunitz, Jacob Lawrence, Alan Lelchuk, Robert Lowell, Flannery O'Connor, Sylvia Plath, Katherine Anne Porter, Mario Puzo, Ned Rorem, Henry Roth, Philip Roth, Clyfford Still, Virgil Thomson, Colm Tóibín, Lionel Trilling, Anne Truitt, Byron Vazakas, and David Foster Wallace.