Alexander J(ackson) Davis

Architect, born in New York City, New York, USA. Trained as an architectural illustrator, he collaborated with Ithiel Town (1829–43) and then worked independently in New York. He promoted a picturesque romanticism in a wide range of buildings and styles, but favoured Neoclassical styles with his signature multi-storey windows for public buildings. In the 1830s he designed a number of state capitols. His Rural Residences (1837), country villa designs, and contributions to Andrew Jackson Downing's books (1839–50), greatly influenced American house design.

Alexander Jackson Davis (A.J.

He studied at the American Academy of Fine Arts, the New-York Drawing Association, and from the Antique casts of the National Academy of Design.

Davis made a first independent career as an architectural illustrator in the 1820s, but his friends, especially painter John Trumbull, convinced him to turn his hand to designing buildings. In 1826, Davis went to work in the office of Ithiel Town and Martin E.

From 1829, in partnership with Town, Davis formed the first recognizably modern architectural office and designed many late classical buildings, including some of public prominence. In Washington, Davis designed the Executive Department offices and the first Patent Office building (1834), and the Custom House of New York City (1833 – 42, illustration,above right).

A series of consultations over state capitols followed, none apparently built entirely as Davis planned: the Indiana State House, Indianapolis (1831 – 35) elicited calls for his advice and designs in building other state capitols in the 1830s: North Carolina's (1833 – 40, with local architect David Paton), the Illinois State Capitol, often attributed entirely to the Springfield, Illinois architect John Rague, who was at work on the Iowa State Capitol at the same time, and in 1839 the committee responsible for commissioning a design for the Ohio Statehouse asked his advice. The resulting capitol in Columbus, Ohio, often attributed to the Hudson River Valley painter Henry Cole consulting with Davis and Ithiel Town, , has a stark Greek Doric colonnade across a recessed entrance, flanked by recessed window bays that continue the rhythm of the central portico, all under a unique drum capped by a low saucer dome. With Town's partner James Dakin he designed the noble colossal Corinthian order of "Colonnade Row" on New York's Lafayette Street, the very first apartments designed for the prosperous American middle class (1833, half still standing). Davis was one of three architects who established the American Institute of Architects in May, 1837;

From 1835, Davis began work on his own on Rural Residences, his only publication, the first pattern book for picturesque residences in a domesticated Gothic Revival taste, which could be executed in carpentry, and also containing the first of the "Tuscan" villas, flat-roofed with wide overhanging eaves and picturesque corner towers. Unfortunately the Panic of 1837 cut short his plans for a series of like volumes, but Davis soon formed a partnership with Andrew Jackson Downing, illustrating his widely-read books. Many of his villas were built in the scenic Hudson River Valley— where his style informed the vernacular Hudson River Bracketed that gave Edith Wharton a title for a novel — but Davis sent plans and specifications to clients as far afield as Indiana, with the understanding that construction would be undertaken by local builders. This practice put Davis's personal stamp on the practical builders' vernacular throughout the Eastern United States as far south as North Carolina, where he designed Blandwood, the 1846 home of Governor John Motley Morehead that stands as America's earliest Tuscan Villa.

In the late 1850s, Davis worked with the entrepreneur Llewellyn S.

Davis designed buildings for the University of Michigan in 1838, and in the 1840s he designed buildings for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

At Virginia Military Institute, Jackson's designs from 1848 through the 1850s created the first entirely Gothic revival college campus, built in brick and stuccoed to imitate stone .

With the onset of Civil War in 1861, patronage in house building dried up, and after the war, new styles unsympathetic to Davis's nature, were in vogue.

Contemporary interest in Davis was spurred by a retrospective exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum in 1992.