Architect. Davis worked both independently and as a partner in the New York architectural firm of Town and Davis.

Included are architectural drawings (circa 1830-1890) of Davis' own projects, those done by Town and Davis, and of existing buildings, including Montgomery Place and Blithewood, two villas in Barrytown, New York; Washington Irving's Sunnyside in Tarrytown, N.Y.; Lyndhurst, another villa in Tarrytown; the planned residential community of Llewellyn Park, New Jersey, including several of the houses there; the original Custom House in New York City, now known as the Federal Hall National Memorial; the Bank of the United States in Philadelphia; the Indiana State Capitol; the North Carolina State Capitol; the Lunatic Asylum on Blackwells Island (later known as Welfare Island, and known today as Roosevelt Island) in New York City; the Chapel for New York University; the Villa Belmead in Powhatan County in Virginia; the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington, Virginia; and numerous residential and institutional projects, chiefly concentrated in the York City metropolitan area and throughout the mid-Atlantic states. Also, correspondence, specifications, accounts, bills, receipts, estimates, prospectuses, maps, photographs, lists, and clippings relating to his architectural work. Correspondents include William P. Elliot, James H. Dakin, Richard Upjohn, Calvert Vaux, Thomas V. Walker, Samuel Colman, and John W. Casileau. Also included are sketches of non-architectural subjects; personal and family correspondence, circa 1804-1880s; illustrations for projected books; lectures and addresses; and business cards. Also, biographical manuscripts, illustrations of coats of arms, pedigree, and lists of his drawings and his library, to circa 1900, much of it done by Joseph B. Davis.