A.J. Downing & His Legacy

John Riddell (ca. 1814–1874) was a Philadelphia architect, and contemporary of Downing, sharing his interest in the Romantic Revival styles. In order to promote his own work, Riddell published the large and lavishly illustrated book, Architectural designs. Riddell may have been hoping to ride a post-Civil War building boom, but his designs were extremely conservative and reflect a taste in domestic architecture that was first popularized a generation earlier through Downing’s Cottage residences.

The center-gable house of Cottage No. 12 has the Romantic era’s innovative addition of an open porch, which linked the interior of the house to its landscape and provided a place for taking in the landscaped views that were part and parcel of Romantic architectural design. However, Riddell’s renderings are only of the building; there is no landscaped setting or people on the porch inviting the viewer to imagine living there the way Downing’s illustrations of cottages and villas brought people into the architecture.