Original Designs in Architecture

William Thomas (d.1800), an English architect known as “architect to his Royal Highness the Duke of Clarence,” created this rare, first, and only edition featuring the designs of some of his executed commissions, along with theoretical “ideal” designs in the Neoclassical style for villas, grottos, and temples. This important pattern book, whose designs were inspired by the great British proponent of the Neoclassical style, Robert Adam (1728-1792), includes 27 copper-plate illustrations of architectural ornament and their application in gardens and building interiors and exteriors. The book became an important guide for American architects such as William Strickland (1788-1854) who also designed buildings in the Neoclassical style. This copy was owned American revivalist architect Alexander Jackson Davis (1803-1892) and donated to the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Library by industrialist, book collector, and former New York City mayor Abram S. Hewitt (1822-1903).