page_title: James Walker Fowler House
section_title: Unused Vaux Plan
hierarchical_section_title: James Walker Fowler House / Owners / Fowlers (1851—1861) / Unused Vaux Plan
caption_attribution_description: English: A Calvert Vaux design (No. 15) from Villas and Cottages, planned for lawyer James Walker Fowler of Newburgh but never built. No. 15 is correct.
context_page_description: The James Walker Fowler House was a historic house in Newburgh, New York, built by Judge James Walker Fowler c. 1850. After Fowler's death, the house passed through two owners before becoming the residence of Captain Thomas S. Marvel, a shipyard owner at the turn of the 20th century. In the 1970s, the house was demolished as part of the city's Urban Renewal efforts.
context_section_description: Fowler originally contacted Calvert Vaux for architectural plans, and wanted a brick villa with a four-story observation tower overlooking the Hudson. Vaux called the neighborhood Limestone Hill, "well adapted for a country seat"  being "a ridge of limestone two miles northwest of the city of Newburgh."  This location does not describe the area Fowler ultimately chose to build the house. However, both somewhat match the description of "an elevated space of table land." The Vaux Fowler site, probably in the Town of Newburgh, would have dominated a hill, its verandah positioned on a bluff with a drive leading from the back, characteristic of such designs.  At the spot, a "mammoth boulder, that looks like a sleeping monster, some twenty or thirty feet long, has been split in a peculiar manner by a tree growing into a fissure behind it, and thus presents a curious appearance."  
  This house would have likened the Matthew Vassar estate.
caption: Design No. 15, Walker Fowler House
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