Pleasure Grounds

A. J. Downing, the celebrated 19th century landscape architect, reserved his greatest admiration for Montgomery Place, in New York's pastoral Dutchess County. His personal and professional relationship with the estate and its owners, and his theories of landscape architecture, are recorded through his letters and his famous article, " A Visit to Montgomery Place." Never before published, 14 watercolor sketches by Alexander Jackson Davis, the noted 19th-century architect and Downing's long-time collaborator, provide stunning evidence of the beauty and splendor of Montgomery Place.