Eccentric and prolific, Alexander Jackson Davis was one of America's most gifted and important 

architects. (1) With the alchemy of his immense talent and innovative 

mind, mixed with his friendships 

among influental artists and patrons of his day, he crafted a career that made a mark like no other on America's architecture. (2), (3) He was a tastemaker for affluent families and civic leaders in the three decades leading up to the Civil War. His aesthetics set the highest standard in both Classical and Romantic styles, from Greek Revival to Gothic Revival, Italianate, also known as American Bracketed, which he is acknowledged as having invented. (4)

Davis is credited with introducing fourteen firsts (5) to the emerging profession of architecture:

partner in the first architectural firm, Town & Davis; first to create a pattern book of designs with a mail order option of designs and builder specifications; first to explore new techniques to create multi-story windows (foreshadowing modern curtain walls,) and a partner with Llewellyn Haskell on America's first suburban planned community - Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey. He was one of three founders of the first American Institute of Architects, and in with the founders when their current formation was finally nailed down decades later in 1857. 

He championed the integration of a structure with its landscape, which led to his deep friendship and professional collaboration with Andrew Jackson Downing, the founding father of landscape design. (6) He was influenced by peers and contemporaries including 
Revolutionary War Colonel and artist, John Trumball. Other famous authors and artists, including the inventor of the telegraph, Samuel F. B. Morse, guided him. The one who pointed Davis toward architecture as his passion was painter Rembrandt Peale. (7)

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A. J. Davis Drawings Gallery

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His pen and brush drafted romantic castles, villas and cottages for 

mayors, moguls and wealthy 

merchants in the Antebellum Period, not all of which remain for our enjoyment to this day. Too many have been demolished. Yet others 

have become museums open to the public: Lyndhurst (the Jay Gould Estate), Locust Grove (Home of Samuel F. B. Morse), and the Rotch Cottage in New Bedford, Massachusetts among them. Davis designed for colleges including New York University, Yale, Chapel Hill, North Carolina the entire campus of Virginia Military Institute. He designed churches and civic buildings, collaborating on more state capitols than any 

other architect: those of Indiana, Illinois, North Carolina and Ohio. (8)

He is credited with hundreds of homes built, and also left behind a treasure trove of gorgeous illustrations and designs that remained unrealized, due to budget cuts, bureaucratic intervention, and a country at war with itself.

His country cottages are easily spotted for their distinct decorative style. Some remain as private residences. The Reuel Smith "Cobweb Cottage" in Skaneateles is one that has been preserved with 

key elements restored, to showcase most of its original, charming presence in its bucolic, lakeside setting. (9)

Born in New York City to Cornelius Davis, an itinerant seller and editor of religious tracts, and Julia Jackson, Alexander Jackson Davis wanted most to become an artist. He spent his youth in West Orange, New Jersey and later attended public school in Upstate New York, in Utica and also in nearby Auburn, where an imposing Gothic prison was constructed from 1816 to 1818, possibly adding to his known fascination with Gothic novels. (10)

Departing from formal school before age 15, he began apprenticing in Alexandria Virginia by learning the printing trade from his half-brother, afterward heading to New York City to study at the American Academy of Fine Arts, and the New York Drawing Association. Becoming a respectable lithographer in the 1820's, he was encouraged by the venerated artists in his circle, including members of the Hudson River School. He attended the salons conducted by Samuel F. B. Morse. (11) His watercolors caught the eye of one of New York's most prominent architects — Ithiel Town, whose engineering prowess and profits from patents had allowed him to amass a library with more than 10,000 books on art and architecture. Town saw the unique draftsman's talents of young Davis as complementary to his own engineering and sales skills, and made him partner. His books were then devoured by Davis, and the duo garnered many important large scale commissions as a team.

By 1835 Davis stepped out on his own, and went on to befriend and collaborate with a like-minded designer of landscapes - Andrew Jackson Downing. The two collaborated on style books for home and garden design that popularized their visions of proper country living, which led to many notable assignments for both. The Downing and Davis team published several books, including Cottage Residences (1842), and The Architecture of Country Houses, (1850), as well as a magazine called The Horticulturist.

His amazing career as what he called an  "Architectural Composer" survived the first of two national tragedies, but not the second. First was the Panic of 1837. This recession truncated the planned publication of his proposed eight volume style guide, "Rural Residences." Only two volumes were produced, with only five hundred copies in total, some hand-tinted, but most going unsold. Yet, during the lull, Davis had still gotten noticed by Downing, many of Ithiel Town's clients, and other luminaries of the day. His work flourished as requests came in. His designs dotted the country from New Bedford to North Carolina with villas and cottages, until the second calamity hit, with more devastating impact: 
It was the Civil War, and it altered 

everything. Post war tastes changed, and his romantic style of design was 
eschewed for the more substantial Greek Revival, Federal and other less fanciful aesthetics. He stuck with Gothic Revival and romantic motifs, which brought him few jobs.

It may not have helped that, rather than adapt, Davis spoke out 
vociferously against what he called Abuses in Architecture in the changing times. In this way, Davis worked more like an academic and a bitter elder statesman until his death in 1892, all the while organizing his papers and cataloguing his work, with full pride of the significance of his contribution to American Architecture.

Tragically, his own colorful and eclectic castle-cottage, Wildmont, in Llewellyn Park, burned to the ground in 1884, taking with it much of his art, essays and reflections. Thankfully, many other drawings, plans and letters were preserved and are currently housed at the Avery Architectural & Fine Arts Library, Columbia University, The New York Public Library, The New York Historical Society and other institutions. A book published by Rizzoli for the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in 1992, is an excellent overview to the genius and his contributions to an era.

The original drawings and specifications for Cobweb Cottage are in a private collection, with copies used on this site by permission. (12)

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"Perhaps no other American architect has made so many lasting contributions to so many different aspects of the built environment."

- Alan Neumann, AIA

Historic Hudson A.J. Davis 200th Anniversary Essay

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Sources:

1. Metropolitan Museum of Art Essay: Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. The Met

2. Jane B. Davies, Introduction, Alexander Jackson Davis, American Arhitect 1803 - 1892, (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rizzoli, 1992). P.9

3. Wayne Andrews, American Gothic: Its origins, its trials, its triumphs, (Random House, 1975). P. 29. From an unbound, partial edition.

4. Julia M. Truettner, Aspirations for Excellence, Alexander Jackson Davis and the First Campus Plan for the University of Michigan, 1838, (Ann Arbor University of Michigan Press, 2003.) P.50

5. Ibid. P. 35

6. Robert Twombly, Andrew Jackson Downing, Essential Texts, (W. W. Norton & Company, 2012). P.15

7. Amelia Peck, Editor, Alexander Jackson Davis, American Arhitect 1803 - 1892, (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rizzoli, 1992). P.27-29

8. Ibid. Pp. 41 -57

9. Architecture worth saving in Onondaga County. Syracuse, N.Y. : New York State Council on the Arts : Syracuse University School of Architecture, c1964.

10. Auburn Prison is Gothic, and was built from 1816 to 1818, but it is unknown whether it was witnessed by Davis, or made an impression on him. He would have been 13 to 15 years old at the time. His interest in Gothic novels is well documented.

11. Jane B. Davies, 1980 Introduction to reprint of 1837 Rural Residences by Alexander Jackson Davis.

12. A. J. Davis original drawings and specifications, hand drawn on vellum with accompanying buider specification sheets customized for the client, Reuel Smith, 1850. Property of Judy Kaspar.