Project Description

A hand made museum will be constructed in the form of a lounging Bobcat. The size will be approximately 15 feet wide, 8 feet deep, and 12 ft tall. The interior will house a collection of materials and displays that deal with the history of the Catskill Mountains. Content will be displayed from both local historical organizations such as the Thomas Cole House and the Vedder Research Library and material collected from the local community as to seamlessly blend and combine it. Folk legends, urban myths and favorite, almost forgotten tidbits, will be displayed. A library featuring books on local vernacular and hand built architecture will also be included.

Exterior:
Its outward appearance will pay homage to the “wood butcher” type of handmade houses built in this area and will consist of a variety of recycled and discarded woods( such as first and second cut-offs from local mills) applied shingle style to the skin of the structure. An outside sitting area will be designed to encourage communal mingling and the exchange of ideas.

Content:

This museum will stress the subjective aspects of studying history,
by first exploring the multiple explanations as to how the “Cat” found it’s way into the name “Catskill”

Whether a tribute to Poet Jacob Cats, the ship titled “the Cat” which sailed up the Hudson River, or the wild cats that once hung out by the creeks( the Kills), the Catamount Museum is more interested in celebrating the unknowns of research rather than a quest for historical accuracy.

Taking an uncritical approach to something usually reserved for the expert, this project will be approachable by a wide range of participants and visitors

A process of research and development will proceed the construction of the museum in which questioneers and surveys will be used to gather content in which the community will make suggestions as to what they would like to see included in the museum’s collection.

side view sketch

Illustration of the open quality of the back side of the structure

interior dwellings

Sketch at location

Catamount Museum Sketch 2

another sketch

first sketch

Some of the structural qualities to the museum will use a skeletal system such as Moshe Safdie’s Peobody Essex Museum building which tips it’s hat to the wooden ship building tradition and Marine animal skeletons.





From Wikipedia:


While the meaning of the name ("cat creek" in Dutch) and the namer (early Dutch explorers) are settled matters, exactly how and why the area is named is a mystery. Mountain Lions or "Catamounts" were known to have been in the area when the Dutch arrived in the 1600s[2].

The most common, and easiest, is that bobcats were seen near Catskill creek and the present-day village of Catskill, and the name followed from there. However there is no record of bobcats ever having been seen in significant numbers on the banks of the Hudson, and the name Catskill does not appear on paper until 1655, more than four decades later.

Other theories include:

* A corruption of kasteel, the Dutch sailors' term for the Indian stockades they saw on the riverbank. According to one Belgian authority, kat occurs in many place names throughout Flanders and has nothing to do with cats and everything to do with fortifications.[citation needed]

* It was to honor Dutch poet Jacob Cats, who was also known for his real estate prowess, profiting from speculation in lands reclaimed from the sea.

* A ship named The Cat had gone up the Hudson shortly before the name was first used. In nautical slang of the era, cat could also mean a piece of equipment, or a particular type of small vessel.

* It has also been suggested that it refers to lacrosse, which Dutch visitors had seen the Iroquois natives play. Kat can also refer to a tennis racket, which a lacrosse stick resembles, and the first place the Dutch saw this, further down the river in the present-day Town of Saugerties, they gave the name Kaatsbaan, for "tennis court," which is still on maps today.

The confusion over the exact origins of the name led over the years to variant spellings such as Kaatskill and Kaaterskill, both of which are also still used, the former in the regional magazine Kaatskill Life, the latter as the name of a town, creek, clove, mountain and waterfall.