Brunel Park consists of a building, statuary, grounds and naturalistic gardens. It is a four acre sculpture park, listed on the New York State and National Registries of Historic Sites. The Friends of Brunel Park (501c3) have been entrusted to grow The Brunel Sculpture Garden’s structural ethos by weaving together its indigenous roots, its history as the inspiration for Emile Brunel’s artistic vision, and its future as a community learning center, public space, and nature sanctuary.
The naturalistic garden features local and native plants surrounding a dozen figurative statues of Native Americans, fanciful creatures and spirits, and totem poles all built from concrete.
Born in 1874, Emile Brunel arrived in America from France in 1904 hungry for adventure. Inspired by the legends and myths he had read, Brunel set off to explore the American West. Brunel discovered his love of photography taking pictures of Native Americans and documenting their way of life with a simple box camera. Returning East in 1910, he founded what is now The New York Institute of Photography(NYIP), one of the largest and longest running photography schools in the world.
He and his wife moved to the Catskills, purchasing the John’s Hotel which he transformed into a world-class resort: Le Chalet Indien. It became a premiere destination for celebrities and politicians from the late 1920s to the mid 1940s, Chalet Indien was a singular Catskills hotel frequented by the likes of Enrico Caruso, Jimmy and Max Ernst, Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, George M. Cohan, Irving Berlin, and King Edward VII with his paramour, Ms. Wallis Simpson. The resort was also popular with artists, architects, writers, poets, and musicians. It was here that he began sculpting.
Credit: Overview from museum website