The Hyde Collection: Old Masters in Glens Falls

Glens Falls, a mill city at the southern edge of the Adirondacks, holds one of the most surprising art collections in upstate New York. The Hyde Collection was assembled by Louis and Charlotte Hyde in the early twentieth century and includes works by Botticelli, Rembrandt, El Greco, Rubens, Degas, Picasso, Renoir, and van Gogh.

Louis Hyde made his money in the paper industry. He and Charlotte were methodical collectors. After Louis died in nineteen thirty-four, Charlotte continued building the collection for thirty more years, roughly tripling its size. In nineteen fifty-two she established a public trust and bequeathed the collection and the house, a beautifully restored early-twentieth-century Florentine Renaissance residence, to the community. The Hyde Collection opened to the public in nineteen sixty-three. It remains one of those rare institutions where you can stand in front of a genuine Rembrandt in a room designed to feel like a private home.