The Works of Alexander Jackson Davis: A Romantic Architect in Antebellum North Carolina

A Romantic Architect in Antebellum North Carolina is not merely a compilation of images; rather, it is a parcel of North Carolina's history. It represents the combined efforts of several years' careful research and thoughtful writing on the part of its authors. It is also a tribute to North Carolina's leaders during the several decades prior to the Civil War who labored to take a sluggish and backward state and make it among the most progressive in the United States. Those leaders, whose names appear throughout this document, strove to create the finest system of public education in the nation, constructed the then-longest railroad in the world, and created institutions for the care of the blind, insane and deaf. They also commissioned one of the nation's preeminent architects, Alexander Jackson Davis, for the design of their public and private edifices.