Their home was the Holley House — today the Bush-Holley House — a colonial saltbox built around 1728 on a hill above Cos Cob Harbor where the Mianus River runs out to the Sound. Josephine and Edward Holley ran it as a boarding house, and the students who came to study with Twachtman took rooms there. In 1896 a young painter named Elmer MacRae arrived as one of those students, fell in love with the Holleys' daughter Constant, married her in 1900, and together they kept the boardinghouse going — and the colony alive — for two more decades.
The house was old long before the painters found it. It began about 1728 as the home of the mercantile Bush family, a classic New England saltbox on the harbor, and it stood through the era of the New Nation in the years after the Revolution. The village around it grew as a working Mianus-River waterfront — wharves, a mill, a shipyard, and oyster boats on the Sound — generations before anyone set up an easel on the riverbank.
Why People Visit Cos Cob
Cos Cob offers art heritage and green escapes in a small, walkable village. Visitors pair the Bush-Holley House and its Impressionist collection with river paths, harbor overlooks, and quiet historic streets. It is tranquil, residential, and close to the water, with year-round appeal in its parks, paths, and public spaces. History and everyday life sit side by side here, from the saltbox over the harbor to the trails along the Mianus.
