Alexander Jackson Davis and his Southern Promoter

Alexander Jackson Davis and his Southern Promoter by Jean Bradley Anderson The article "Alexander Jackson Davis and his Southern Promoter" was given at a symposium in Raleigh at the Museum of History entitled "Romanticism and Reform: A Symposium on Architecture, Decorative Arts, and Landscaping in Antebellum North Carolina" on 27 and 28 March 1998. It examines the friendship of Davis and Robert Donaldson, his promoter, and its influence on North Carolina architecture. Anyone who studies the career of Alexander J. Davis sooner or later encounters Robert Donaldson. Donaldson played a crucial role in introducing Davis to North Carolina and in furthering his career here and elsewhere. Born in Fayetteville, North Carolina, in 1800, Donaldson was still a young man, probably about thirty when he met Davis, three years his junior. For three decades or more, Donaldson repeatedly turned to Davis for help in the rebuilding or renovation of his own property: first for his house on the Battery in New York City and later for his successive Hudson River estates Blithewood, the more famous then and Edgewater, the more famous now. Through Donaldson's direct influence or example, his sisters, brother, nephew, and daughter also employed Davis for many building projects: a school, their own residences, gatehouses and other outbuildings, and churches. Donaldson's example undoubtedly influenced his neighbors on the Hudson, as well, particularly Mrs. Edward Livingston and her daughter, Mrs. Thomas P. Barton, who employed Davis for a series of additions to their estate, Montgomery Place. Donaldson and Davis could possibly have met as early as 1829 or 1830 when Davis became a partner of Ithiel Town, but their earliest documented interaction was in 1831 when Davis designed a new entrance for Donaldson's State Street house in New York. That year was propitious for Davis's career in another way. Two disastrous fires in Fayetteville and Raleigh, North Carolina, opened the way for Davis, through Donaldson's agency, to introduce his work to the state. The fire in Fayetteville destroyed much of Donaldson's own property as well as the church of his childhood. Probably as a sympathetic and friendly