Lyndhurst's Designer of Dreams: 5 Facts about Alexander Jackson Davis
Alexander Jackson Davis is one of the most famous 19th century American architects...that everyone has forgotten about.
Prolific in the 1830s to the 1850s, Davis designed buildings and residences up and down the East Coast, with a high concentration in the Hudson Valley and in Westchester County, New York.
This season, a new exhibition at Lyndhurst (a National Trust Historic Site) looks at the trajectory of Davis’s career through the evolution of Lyndhurst and some of the other important homes he designed in the area. The exhibition combines objects and art from private lenders and libraries, but also the major institutions that house Davis’s prolific archive, like the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library of Columbia University, the New York Public Library, and the Smithsonian.
Below are 5 lesser-known, but interesting, facts about Davis. Alexander Jackson Davis: Designer of Dreams runs through October 13th, 2025.
photo by: © Bruce M White
Photograph of the exhibition, with portrait of Alexander Jackson Davis (1845), copy from Drawings and Archives, Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, Columbia University.
1. From Artist to Architect
Davis knew at a young age he would be an artist, and his background was in theater design, watercolors, and lithography before he became an architect. Traditionally, architects in the 19th century had a construction or engineering background, and Davis thought that architecture was the ultimate achievable art form.
2. Oh, my Goth!
photo by: © Bruce M White
The exhibition showcases some of Davis’s gothic inspirations, including a Jasper Cropsey painting of knights jousting in front of a medieval castle, "The Olden Times (Morning)", 1859, courtesy of the Newington-Cropsey Foundation.
Gothic literature, theater, and artwork were critical to Davis’s aesthetics and informed his design choices; you can see him building his own American-style medieval castles. The books he read, and the Gothic pop culture coming out of England in his youth, would be his biggest influence, although he himself would never travel there.
3. Castles, Castles Everywhere
photo by: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund
Davis’s presentation watercolor of west elevation of Lyndehurst for George Merritt (1865).
photo by: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund
Davis’s presentation watercolor of Ericstan for J.J. Herrick (1855).
Davis designed the initial villa for the Pauldings (the first owners of the home), Paulding Manor, in the late 1830s and then returned to expand and update the house for George Merritt in the mid-1860s, when it became known as Lyndhurst. The expansion and update included Davis using Ericstan, another large castle-like house in the area that he designed and built in the mid-1850s, as inspiration for the update. Davis and Merritt would take trips to Ericstan to make design, material, and furniture choices.
4. Inside Out
photo by: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund
Close-up crops of Davis’s ‘umbrage’ design feature on the Lyndhurst house drawings. Davis’s west elevation presentation watercolor of Lyndhurst for George Merritt (1865).
photo by: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund
Floorplan watercolor of Lyndhurst (1865) showing the location of the 'umberage' design feature.
The veranda, or 'umbrage' as Davis referred to it, was a design choice of his invention. While composing and designing homes, he harmonized the architecture with the landscape, and the umbrage (meaning in shadow) was a soft transitional space from inside to outside and vice versa. Lyndhurst is supposedly the first of Davis’s designs to employ it as he fully intended.
5. Friends with a ‘Legend’
photo by: © Bruce M White
A niche in the exhibition that features Davis’s book on architecture, "Rural Residences," which was inscribed as a gift to his friend Washington Irving, author of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”, courtesy of Historic Hudson Valley.
As a young man in New York Society, Davis hung out with other artists and writers, communing on trends to influence and inspire each other. One of Davis’s notable connections was with author Washington Irving, who penned ‘The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.’ The famed author’s home, Sunnyside, is just next door to Davis’s gothic masterpiece, Lyndhurst, and his face mask is located in the Lyndhurst Art Gallery.
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