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Alexander Jackson Davis architectural drawing collection

Call Number

PR 16

Date

1827-1884 (bulk, 1837-1855), inclusive

Creator

Davis, Alexander Jackson, 1803-1892

Extent

37.6 Linear feet (ca. 800 drawings)

Language of Materials

This collection is primarily visual. Any text is likely to be in English.

Abstract

The Alexander J. Davis Architectural Drawings Collection spans the period from 1827 to 1884 and contains approximately 800 drawings, chiefly renderings and plans in ink, graphite, and watercolor. This collection includes both famous built projects and unrealized conceptual designs. Compared with other collections of Davis' works, the Society's collection is particularly strong in New York City and State material.

Biographical/Historical Note

Alexander J. Davis (July 24, 1803-Jan 14, 1892) was born in New York City, the son of Cornelius Davis, a bookseller and editor of New York Theological Magazine, and Julia Jackson. His early years were spent in Newark, New Jersey and in upstate, frontier, New York. In 1818, at age 15, Davis was sent to Virginia, to learn the printing trade. In 1823, after several years of apprenticeship, Davis moved back to New York City and supported himself by typesetting while studying art. He took classes at the American Academy of the Fine Arts, the New-York Drawing Association, and the National Academy of Design. At the suggestion of painter Rembrandt Peale, one of the founders of the NAD, Davis started concentrating his drawing talent on architectural design and renderings.

Davis began to draw views of buildings in New York City and throughout the Northeast. He published many as engravings and lithographs. Davis worked with meticulous care, many of these early lithographs are valuable in their accurate details. He became an expert delineator and watercolorist, one of the finest architectural renderers of his period. Perhaps due to this intense artistic background, architectural design, rather than structure or theory, was always his main interest. Davis began his architectural career in 1826 by drafting for New York architect Josiah R. Brady. In 1827 and 1828, Davis journeyed to Boston where he made detailed studied of Greek architecture from books in the Boston Lyceum. He began to create original designs, using Greek styles as models from which to deviate.

In 1828, Davis set up an architecture practice. His first executed design was a country house outside of New Haven, Connecticut for the poet James A. Hillhouse. This Greek Revival design generated the interest of Ithiel Town, one of the premier architects of the time and the leading designer of Greek Revival style buildings. In February 1829 Davis became Town's partner. Town held one of the greatest architectural libraries in the United States at the time, which benefited the young Davis greatly.

Over the course of the next 6 years, the pair designed many public buildings and a few private homes, churches, and commercial buildings. They built mainly in the Greek Revival style; buildings included deep porticos, columns, and massive anta-type piers.

Important Town & Davis commissions include the State House at New Haven, Connecticut (1827-31), the state capitols of Indiana (1831-35) and North Carolina (1833-40) and New York's Custom House (1833-42). They also designed a Blackwell Island Lunatic asylum (1834), only some of which was ever built. Town & Davis built the first iron shop-front in New York City (Lyceum of Natural History, 561-3 Broadway, 1835). This building was one of the first to be built with what would become Davis' signature, "Davisean," windows – multistoried, recessed, and paneled at floor levels, an effect that vertically unified facades. Important New York churches built by Town & Davis are the Ionic-style French Church du Saint Esprit (1831-34) with a high dome and distyle-in-antis façade and the influential West Presbyterian Church on Carmine Street (1831-32). Town & Davis also built several impressive residences: Samuel Ward's New York City house (1831-33) included an art gallery, pilasters and introduced columns in the townhouse doorways. "Glen Ellen," (1832) a large country estate built for Robert Gilmor outside of Baltimore, Maryland, was an early indicator of Davis' future career.

In May of 1835 Town retired and Davis struck out on his own. By this time Davis' name had been made. In 1836-37 he was instrumental in forming the American Institution of Architects, a professional association which soon failed, perhaps due to the small size of the profession. Twenty years later, Davis was an original trustee of the American Institute of Architects, an organization that fared much better, and is still in existence. Davis continued to design grandiose public buildings on his own. The Illinois State Capitol (1837) and the Wadsworth Athenauem (1842) were important commissions. Davis was also named expert architect on the Ohio State Capitol (1838-61).

Despite Davis' success, the financial panic of 1837 and subsequent economic trouble meant few of Davis' building designs were built. In addition, his interest in introducing new architectural styles was not always appreciated by clients; he designed several buildings for the University of Michigan, but the plans were deemed too radical for construction. He began to focus on the design of romantic country houses, second residences popular in England. In 1837 he published Rural Residences, Consisting of Designs Original and Selected for Cottages, Farmhouses, Villas and Village Churches, the first American book about country houses. He combined drawings of several of his early constructions, such as gate houses built for Robert Donaldson's estate "Blithewood" in Annandale on-Hudson, New York (1836), with theoretical designs and drawings.

Inspired by English picturesque models, Davis introduced villas and cottages with the harmonizing irregularities and dramatic lines of romantic Gothic, Italianate, and Bracketed forms. In Rural Residences. . . Davis criticized "the bald and uninteresting aspect of our houses" and the lack of connection between the house and its site. His designs worked to overcome these deficiencies. Davis almost single-handedly created American interpretations of English cottage, Bracketed, and Gothic Revival styles. Early examples of his country homes were Henry Sheldon's Gothic cottage "Millbrook," near Tarrytown, New York (1838-40), William and Philip Paulding's "Knoll," also near Tarrytown, New York (1838-42; enlarged as "Lyndhurst," 1864-67), Joel Rathbone's "Kenwood" near Albany, New York (1842-49), and North Carolina Governor John M. Morehead's "Blandwood" in Greensboro, North Carolina (1844).

Davis's country houses were first built along the Hudson River Valley in New York, at the same time as that setting was being popularized and romanticized by the Hudson River School of artists. The English idea of picturesque was transformed into an American Romanticism. Davis felt the English house style was too grand for the new republican nation, and insisted on the individualism of Americans by varying each house design to it landscape as well as owner's tastes. His designs were instrumental in opening up the boxy American house form, and moved toward open floor plans.

Although only two parts of his Rural Residences. . . were issued instead of the planned six, Davis' ideas and patterns were widely disseminated in the Horticulturist magazine and in Andrew Jackson Downing's architectural books, most published between 1839 and 1850, publications on which Davis often collaborated. Davis's houses were mainly grand in size and included ample verandas and asymmetric heights often involving towers and turrets. This style appealed to the newly wealthy businessmen who existed up and down the east coast of the United States in the middle of the 19th century, and guaranteed Davis a long list of influential clientele.

Outstanding in design were Davis' Gothic villa for Philip St. George Cocke's (1845-48) Belmead on the James River in Virginia, as well as his cottage residence for William J. Rotch (1845-47) in New Bedford, Massachusetts. John J. Herrick's "Ericstan" at Tarrytown, New York (1855-59) was one of the few Davis houses cut in stone. Davis also produced many homes of an "Americanized Italian" design, notably druggist Llewellyn Haskell's "Belmont" (1850-52) in Belleville, New Jersey, Richard Lathers' "Winyah" (1851-52) in New Rochelle, New York, and Edwin C. Litchfield's "Grace Hill" (1853-58) in Brooklyn, New York. Richard O. Morris's "Harkwood" in Green Springs, Virginia, was distinctive with an encircling arcade instead of a veranda (1851-54). Davis also designed a few large country houses in the classical style, notably the Livingston Family's "Montgomery Place" (1841-44, 1863-64) in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.

Sometimes Davis brought features and decorative details from his rural designing into the urban scene, in such forms as bay and oriel windows, verandas, and bracketed eaves. Terracotta corn and wheat were seen on columns. New York City residences include: John Cox Stevens' "Palace" (1845-8) with exquisite, neoclassical detailing, and a set of twin houses for James W. Phillips and Charles C. Taber (1847-48). These row houses were among the City's first built in the Renaissance Revival style.

Davis continued to design institutional and public buildings as well as country homes. Davis and Town often entered competitions for public buildings together, and reestablished their partnership for a year in 1842-43. In non-residential projects, Davis often stuck to symmetrical designs, which were popular with universities. He designed an Assembly Hall for the University of North Carolina (1844), several buildings at the Virginia Military Institute (1848-61), Alumni Hall at Yale (1852), and buildings for Davidson College in North Carolina (1858).

Davis married Margaret Beale in 1853 and only then did he seem to begin to consider his own personal residence needs. In 1857 Davis helped to establish and settle Llewellyn Park in West Orange, New Jersey, a "select residential district." Llewellyn Park was the brainchild and namesake of Davis client Llewellyn S. Haskell. Davis designed several houses, including one a "summer lodge" for himself, in the romantically landscaped suburb. During the late 1850s Davis became disenchanted with the architectural styles in vogue (Ruskinian High Victorian Gothic and French Second Empire) He continued to design homes and other buildings, but his popularity waned. The Civil War halted all building in the U.S. for several years, which adversely affected Davis's career. He executed few projects after the war, although his postwar designs for the Gothic "Lyndhurst" and the Neoclassical "Montgomery Place" have been considered the climax to his rural residential designs.

In 1878 Davis closed his New York office, where he had both lived and worked for most of his professional career. He joined his wife and their two children in New Jersey, and set about enlarging "Wildmont," previously his summer lodge, for year-round use. "Wildmont" burned down in 1884, before the family could move there, and Davis died in a small house designed by his son on the same site.

Sources: Dictionary of American Biography MacMillan Encyclopedia of American Architects

Scope and Contents

The Alexander J. Davis Architectural Drawings Collection spans the period from 1827 to 1884 and contains approximately 800 drawings, chiefly renderings and plans in ink, graphite, and watercolor. This collection includes both famous built projects and unrealized conceptual designs. Compared with other collections of Davis' works, the Society's collection is particularly strong in New York City and State material.

Only a few drawings from Davis' early career exist in this collection. Town and Davis designs include one drawing each of the Custom House, the Lyceum of Natural History, and for Jones Court, office building on Wall Street. Five design drawings exist from 1833 or 1834 for a house for William Wolcott Wadsworth in Geneseo, New York, which was never executed. Two design drawings for the North Carolina State Capitol also date from the Town and Davis partnership.

Davis' romantic country villas and cottages are represented in this collection by some 200 drawings and by his 1838 publication Rural Residences. . .. The drawings from Rural Residences. . . are unbound and individually catalogued. They include generic plans for country villas and cottages, as well as drawings of well-known Davis designs like the "Blithewood" gate houses, "Eyrie," Llewellyn Haskell's house in Llewellyn Park, and the David Codwise Villa in New Rochelle.

Many houses appear in only a single sheet. These include important Davis commissions such as Richard Lathers' "Winyah" and John J. Herrick's "Ericstan," as well as many other executed and not executed country homes. More drawings exist for the following houses: "Montgomery Place" in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y. (6 drawings,) "Belmead" (6 drawings,) Thomas Merrick's "Tyrdyn Terrace" in Llewellyn Park (8 drawings,) Joel Rathbone's "Kenwood" (10 drawings,) and "Kirri Cottage" in Newark, N.J., built for Davis' mother Julia Jackson Davis House (8 drawings.) Also well represented in the collection are drawings of houses built for William S. Archer (Elk Hill, Va., 6 drawings,) Samuel F.B. Morse, (Poughkeepsie, N.Y., 4 drawings,) John Rutherford (rural New Jersey, 8 drawings,) Charles B. Sedgewick (Syracuse, N.Y., 8 drawings,) and Andrew Weir (Norfolk, Va., 8 drawings.)

Larger sets of drawings are present for "Wildmont," Davis' own summer lodge in Llewellyn Park (33 drawings) and "Mount Wollaston," a commission from Charles Francis Adams and John Quincy Adams that was never built (15 drawings.) A set of 23 drawings covers "Grace Hill," Edwin Clark Litchfield's villa in Brooklyn (one of the few surviving of Davis' New York City structures.) Twenty-three drawings date from the 1867 renovation/transformation of "Knoll" to "Lyndhurst." Nearly that many are from the renovation of an existing house to create a residence for David Hoadley in Englewood, N.J.

Many unidentified drawings are designs for urban double houses and town houses. Several drawings comprise Davis' entry in a Tenement House Competition sponsored by the National Academy of Design in 1876. Identified New York City homes include those of Charles A. Davis (Gramercy Park,) William Coventry H. Waddell (Murray Hill) and one sheet of the Phillips and Taber double house. Twelve drawings show a series of rowhouses built for Major General Daniel Butterfield 87th Street and 5th Avenue.

The remaining drawings depict more that 150 different projects designed or sketched by Davis: numerous churches and public buildings, several office and commercial buildings; art galleries, schools, historical societies, and libraries, including an unexecuted scheme for the Astor Library; asylums and hospitals; and monuments. Only some of the drawings are fully identified and dated; most are signed. Plans include an unexecuted hotel on Constitution Island, and three 1870 designs for a new New-York Historical Society building (not executed.)

Significant identified buildings in New York include the West Presbyterian Church on Carmine Street in Manhattan, Brooklyn City Hall (13 drawings,) the Long Island Historical Society (8 drawings,) the Pauper Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island (4 drawings) and a design (unexecuted) for the Jefferson Market Courthouse.

Most of Davis' North Carolina projects are shown here, if in only a few sheets per project. The collection also includes four drawings of the Ohio State Capitol. Two floor plans for the White Sulpher Springs Hotel in West Virginia, an unexecuted commission to design new hotel and bath houses, are also present

Some project correspondence is filed in with the drawings. A few sheets of letterpress specifications for various projects are included in the collection.

Most drawings were numbered by Society staff upon receipt. In some cases, drawings from the same projects were given alphabetical suffixes. Indices of drawings by number and by project title follow this text.

Access Restrictions

Materials in this collection may be stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.

Use Restrictions

Taking images of documents from the library collections for reference purposes by using hand-held cameras and in accordance with the library's photography guidelines is encouraged. As an alternative, patrons may request up to 20 images per day from staff.

Application to use images from this collection for publication should be made in writing to: Department of Rights and Reproductions, The New-York Historical Society, 170 Central Park West, New York, NY 10024-5194, rightsandrepro@nyhistory.org. Phone: (212) 873-3400 ext. 282.

Copyrights and other proprietary rights may subsist in individuals and entities other than the New-York Historical Society, in which case the patron is responsible for securing permission from those parties. For fuller information about rights and reproductions from N-YHS visit: https://www.nyhistory.org/about/rights-reproductions

Preferred Citation

This collection should be cited as: Alexander J. Davis Architectural Drawing Collection, PR 016, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, The New-York Historical Society.

Location of Materials

Materials in this collection may be stored offsite. For more information on making arrangements to consult them, please visit www.nyhistory.org/library/visit.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

675 drawings were donated by Samuel V. Hoffman, 1927. Litchfield Villa drwaings, gift of Edward S. Litchfield, 1976. Additional donors noted in respository.

Related Materials

There is a broadside advertising Davis' services as an architect in the Bella Landauer Collection of Business and Advertising Ephemera (PR 31). Lithographs by Anthony Imbert from drawings by Davis are in the Printmaker File (PR 058.) An album of drawings presented to Davis by John Trumbell is in the Architects and Engineers File (PR 003.) A photograph of the Coles Residence (now demolished) can be found in the Tiemann Collection (PR xxx). The Manuscript Department at the New-York Historical Society has a list of Davis' architectural books, ca. 10 drawings, and some correspondence. The Department of Painting, Sculpture, and Decorative Arts has ca. 30 drawings by Davis, most for illustrations in the New-York Mirror in the 1820s.

Other large collections of Davis material are at the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the New York Public Library.

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2023-08-21 15:49:28 -0400.
Language: Finding aid written in English.

Repository

New-York Historical Society
New-York Historical Society
170 Central Park West
New York, NY 10024