The manuscript collection of the 19th century architect AJ Davis
are far more complete that his senior partner, Ithiel Town, whose personal
papers were lost in a series of fires (Davis' hilltop home, "Wildmont", was prone to lightning fires). Despite this disparity,
more evidence has surfaced that potentially links Town with the
brickwork at 211 Pearl Street. Town and the building's owner, William
Colgate, were also just a year apart in age and there is more circumstantial evidence to suggest an association.
But at least a few documents in the Davis collection (Columbia's Avery
Library) suggest A.J. Davis' connection with the symbolic design. One is a series of
drawings for a fireplace mantel at his home in Orange, NJ.
Another is a curious essay written in 1876,
"The Earth and its Elements: Fire.", in which Davis discusses the balance between science and the spiritual life. But the manuscript that evokes the most direct evidence is a
pencil sketch found on the reverse side of an interior view for the chapel
at NYU (1837). It is possible that Town was the source of the design idea, but the
drawing is executed by Davis. These documents continue to fall short of
documented proof of
the firms involvement at William Colgate's warehouse, but the
similar geometry is striking enough to reasonably place the firm among the suspects.
Each design features a vertically aligned arrangement of triangles, with
the forms above and below converging into a center form; a scalene triangle
at 211 Pearl St. and two interconnected isocseles triangles in the NYU
chapel sketch. Both would seem to suggest a Christian meaning, with their
associations to a founder of the American Bible Society and a Chapel. Other
Esoteric or Philosophical implications that may be synthesized with this religious meaning would be more speculative.
