"We Can't Get On Without You"

Letters to Alexander J. Davis, Architect

JANE B. DA VIES

HARLES ADDAMS's fiends would have been very
ill at ease in the Victorian houses which Alexander
J. Davis designed for his clients. To be sure, his
picturesque villas and charming cottages usually had towers and
frills and gingerbread, but these were discreetly applied and
there was little of the macabre and sinister. After all, in Davis's
day his houses had nothing of decay; they were new, the new¬
est thing in the fashion and taste of the period—though he hoped
they might e\'oke something of a feeling of antiquity. The few
that have surxived cast a graceful shadow on tiiis bleaker twen¬
tieth century.

A friend of Asiier B. Durand and Thomas Cxile, of John Ca-
silear and the English painter George Harvey who painted
"atmospheric views" at Hastings on the Hudson, the romantic
architect was, like the painters, deeply moved by the unspoiled
American landscape of his day. He went on trips up the Hudson
with them and explotcd the wooded hills and the dark ravines
of its valley. And in rural architecture lie explored for forms
that would be in harmony with the natural scene, for irregular
shapes and outlines that were free from rigid formality, for bold
and dramatic features with contrasts of light and shade. He was
influenced, to be sure, by English books on the Picturesque and
by the vogue for the Gothic, ItaHan, and Swiss styles, but his
work was highly individual, and he ventured, too, into types he
called "American." However, for serene and quiet scenes, and
for the city, he never lost his fondness for the classical.

Born in 1803 in New York, he spent there most of the long
life that nearly spanned the centuty. He began as an artist, draw-

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