The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Downing, Andrew Jackson

DOWNING, Andrew Jackson, an American landscape gardener, born in Newburgh, N. Y., Oct. 30, 1815, drowned in the Hudson river, near Yonkers, July 28, 1852. From an early age his tastes were directed to horticulture, botany, and the natural sciences, which the occupation of his father, a nurseryman, gave him many opportunities to cultivate. His school education was acquired chiefly at an academy in the neighboring town of Montgomery. He returned home at the age of 16 to assist an elder brother in the management of the nursery, but continued a course of self-education which gave him a broad general culture. At the age of 20 he determined to become a rural architect, and began to visit the neighboring estates on the Hudson, to enlarge his experience and confirm his theories of landscape gardening. Three years later he erected on his estate an elegant mansion, which afforded the first practical illustration of the builder's conception of an American rural home. His career as an author properly begins with the publication in 1841 of his “Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening.” As a pioneer of its class in this country, it attracted attention, and the author's extensive information, correct taste, and appreciation of the conditions of rural architecture, gave it immediate popularity and a position as a standard authority, both in America and England. “Cottage Residences” (1842) was received with equal favor; and until his death Downing continued to be the chief American authority in rural art. In 1845 appeared simultaneously in London and New York his “Fruits and Fruit Trees of America;” and in 1846 he became editor of the “Horticulturist,” published in Albany, for which he wrote an essay every month until the close of his life. In 1849 he wrote “Additional Notes and Hints to persons about building in this country,” for an American reprint of Wightwick's “Hints to Young Architects,” and in 1850 published his “Architecture for Country Houses.” His remaining work was an edition of Mrs. Loudon's “Gardening for Ladies.” The summer of 1850 he passed in England, chiefly among the great country seats, of which he wrote descriptions. On his return to America he received many private commissions, and was intrusted in 1851 with the laying out of the public grounds in the city of Washington, in the vicinity of the capitol, the president's house, and the Smithsonian institution. In the midst of these labors he took passage at Newburgh on July 28, 1852, in the steamboat Henry Clay, for New York. Near Yonkers the boat took fire, and he was drowned in endeavoring to reach the shore. A memoir of him by George W. Curtis, and a “Letter to his Friends,” by Miss Bremer, who had been his guest during her visit to America, were prefixed to a collection of his contributions to the “Horticulturist,” published in 1854, under the title of “Rural Essays.”