Resources

On Springside

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Vassar College Encyclopedia Entry - Springside

National Historic Landmark Springside designation - August 11, 1969.

National Register of Historic Places – “Springside” (The Matthew Vassar Home) listed December 1974.

Local Historic Landmark - Porter’s Lodge at Springside – designated by the City of Poughkeepsie, April 29, 2004. The designation includes the gates.

Flad, Harvey K. “Matthew Vassar’s Springside: “…the hand of Art, when guided by Taste”” in Prophet with Honor: The Career of Andrew Jackson Downing 1815-1852, Tatum, George B. and Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, eds., Washington, D.C. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1989: 219-257.

Lossing, Benson J. Vassar College and Its Founder. New York: C.A. Alvord Printer, 1867: 61-79.

Toole, Robert M. “Historic Landscape Report, 1852, Springside Landscape Garden,” Hudson River Sloop Clearwater and Scenic Hudson, Inc. 1987. (unpublished report)

Toole, Robert M. Landscape Gardens on the Hudson: A History. “Springside” New York: Black Dome Press, 2010: 127-136.

Toole, Robert M. “Springside: A.J. Downing’s Only Extant Garden.” Journal of Garden History 9:1, 1989: 20-39.

Tourbier & Walmsley, “Preservation Maintenance Plan for A Historic Landscape” prepared for Springside Landscape Restoration, May 2000. (unpublished report)

Walmsley & Company, Inc. “Site Analysis, Landscape Master Plan, and Maintenance Plan of Springside National Historic Landmark” prepared for Springside Landscape Restoration, July 1988. (unpublished report)

On Matthew Vassar

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Vassar Encyclopedia Entry – More than a Brewer

Lossing, Benson J. Vassar College and Its Founder. New York: C.A. Alvord Printer, 1867.

Special Collections

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Historic American Buildings Survey
Springside, Academy Street, Poughkeepsie, Dutchess County, NY.
Library of Congress, Prints & Photographs Division, HABS NY-5489.

Matthew Vassar PapersArchives and Special Collections Library, Vassar College.

Henry Gritten, English 1818-1873: Springside: Center Circle, 1852, oil on canvas, 25 ½ x 37 inchesSpringside: View of Gardner’s Cottage, 1852, oil on canvas, 25 ½ x 37 inchesSpringside: View of Barn Complex and Gardens, 1852, oil on canvas, 25 ½ x 37 inches, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, Promised gifts of Mr. and Mrs. Thomas M. Evans, Jr. (Tania Goss, class of 1959)

James Henry Wright, American 1813-1883, Portrait of Matthew Vassar, 1861 by James Henry Wright, oil on canvas, 97 x 65 3/4 inches, The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York, Gift of the estate of Matthew Vassar, 1870.1.1

Books by Andrew Jackson Downing

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A Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening as adapted to North America; with a view to the Improvement of Country Residences. New York & London: Wiley & Putnam, 1841; Boston: C.C. Little & Co., 1841.

There are many editions – 2^nd edition, 1844; 4^th edition, 1849; 5^th edition, 1853; 6^th edition with supplement by Henry Winthrop Sargent, 1859; 10^th edition revised by Frank A. Waugh, 1859;

Cottage Residences: or, a Series of Designs for Rural Cottages and Cottage-Villas, and Their Gardens and Grounds, Adapted to North America. New York & London: Wiley & Putnam, 1842.

The Fruit and Fruit Trees of America; or, The Culture, Propagation, and Management, in the Garden and Orchard, of Fruit Trees Generally; with Descriptions of all the Finest Varieties of Fruit Native and Foreign, Cultivated in this Country. New York & London: Wiley & Putnam, 1845. Or is it 1847? (14 editions by 1856!)

The Architecture of Country Houses; including Designs for Cottages, Farm Houses, and Villas, with Remarks on Interiors, Furniture, and the Best Modes of Warming and Ventilating. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1850.

Edited by Andrew Jackson Downing

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The Horticulturist and Journal of Rural Art and Rural Taste. Devoted to Horticulture, Landscape Gardening, Rural Architecture, Botany, Pomology, Entomology, Rural Economy, Etc. July 1846 to July 1852.

Loudon, Jane. Gardening for Ladies; and Companion to the Flower-Garden, American edition, A.J. Downing, ed., New York: Wiley & Putnam, 1847.

On Andrew Jackson Downing and His Work – selected

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Smithsonian Gardens: The Downing Urn in the Enid A. Haupt Garden

Armstead, Myra B. Young. Freedom’s Gardener: James F. Brown, Horticulture, and the Hudson Valley in Antebellum America. New York: New York University Press, 2012: 46-50, 57-59 and more.

Birnbaum Charles A. and Robin Karson, eds., Pioneers of American Landscape Design, New York: McGraw-Hill, 2000: 96-100.

Leighton, Ann. American Gardens of the Nineteenth Century “For Comfort and Affluence.” Amherst: The University of Massachusetts Press, 1987: 163-191.

Major, Judith K., To Live in the New World: A.J. Downing and American Landscape Gardening, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1997.

Rogers, Elizabeth Barlow. Landscape Design: A Cultural and Architectural History. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 2001: 325-330.

Schuyler, David. Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815-1852, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.

Schuyler, David. Sanctified Landscape: Writers, Artists, and the Hudson River Valley, 1820-1909. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2012: 69-91.

Tatum, George B. and Elisabeth Blair MacDougall, eds., Prophet with Honor: The Career of Andrew Jackson Downing 1815-1852, Washington, D.C. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, 1989.

Toole, Robert M. “The Romantic Hudson”, The Hudson River Valley Review, Vol. 27, No.1, Autumn 2010. Pg. 2-13.

Twombly, Robert, ed., Andrew Jackson Downing: Essential Texts. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 2012.

Yglesias, Caren. The Complete House and Grounds: Learning from Andrew Jackson Downing’s Domestic Architecture. Chicago: Center for American Places at Columbia College, 2011. 

On Calvert Vaux

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Vaux, Calvert. Villas and Cottages: A Series of Designs Prepared for Execution in the United States. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1857.

Alex, William and George B. Tatum. Calvert Vaux: Architect and Planner. New York: Ink, Inc., 1994.

Kowsky, Francis R. Country, Park, and City: The Architecture and Life of Calvert Vaux. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.