Walking Tour

As best-selling author of A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening, Andrew Jackson Downing had enormous influence on 19th century landscape design. The son of a Newburgh, New York nurseryman, Downing became the spokesman for a new era in American taste, and his ideas transformed the appearance of the American countryside.

Downing’s aesthetic ideas stemmed from the Romantic movement that dominated artistic output from the late 18th century to the mid-19th century in Europe and America, encompassing fine art, literature, music, and philosophy. Downing believed a formalized, geometric landscape was inappropriate for the rugged Hudson River Valley terrain and promoted instead a scenographic landscape that was naturalistic in design. 

Downing’s design of Springside illustrates his principles of the Beautiful and Picturesque in harmony. Characteristics of the Beautiful are found in the graceful, flowing lines of the landscape such as the meandering carriage paths, rounded forms of mature trees, open meadows, and gently rolling hills. In contrast, Picturesque elements are rugged and irregular, and as Downing put it, “spirited”, which are found in the jagged rock outcroppings and gnarled trees.

At the same time of Springside’s development, Downing transformed the National Mall into the first landscaped public park using the same principles of informal, romantic arrangements of circular carriage drives and plantings of rare American trees. Examples from Downing’s National Mall design can be found at Springside, such as the circular meadow in the Parade of President’s Park, the curving trails throughout Monument Park, and the arrangement of trees in Evergreen Garden. Downing’s design for the National Mall endured until 1934, when it was restored to Pierre L’Enfant’s 1791 plan. Downing, considered the father of American landscape architecture, also designed the White House and Capitol grounds.

Throughout Springside, Downing crafted a series of spaces or outdoor “rooms” that are approached from a constantly changing perspective of curving trails and carriage roads. Many of the landscape features that Downing pioneered at Springside were later important for Calvert Vaux and Frederick Law Olmsted in their designs for Central Park and other major parks in American cities.