Springside (Poughkeepsie, New York)
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Springside
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Surviving gateposts at cottage entrance, 2007
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| Location | Poughkeepsie, NY |
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| Coordinates | 41°41′21″N 73°55′43″W / 41.68917°N 73.92861°WCoordinates: 41°41′21″N 73°55′43″W / 41.68917°N 73.92861°W |
| Area | 26.5 acres (11 ha) |
| Built | 1850 |
| Architect | Andrew Jackson Downing |
| Architectural style | Gothic Revival |
| NRHP reference # | 69000141 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | August 11, 1969 |
| Designated NHL | August 11, 1969 |
Springside was the estate of Matthew Vassar in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. It is located on Academy Street just off US 9. Detailed plans for a landscape and complex of farm buildings were drawn up by the influential Andrew Jackson Downing prior to his death. The landscaping was completed and remains Downing's only surviving work, but only a few of the buildings were ever built and most have since been lost to fire and structural failure. A cottage where Vassar resided, Downing's only known surviving building, had to be dismantled and removed in the mid-1970s. Its facade is on display in the New York State Museum.
Downing's landscape, in the English Landscape Garden style, has survived several serious efforts to redevelop the property in the last half-century due to opposition from local preservationists. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Matthew Vassar Estate, and further it was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1969, but the estate was not permanently protected for almost two decades, when a lawsuit was settled with the transfer of the land to its current owners, Springside Landscape Restoration.
Springside's development took up much of the last two years of Downing's life, and the latter years of Vassar's. The unfinished estate was maintained and developed by several other families for a century afterward. Their descendants were more amenable to selling the land for development in the years afterward, which led in turn to the efforts to protect and restore it.
The Springside property was the "Allen farm", first a family farm, then an ornamental farm of roughly 45 acres (18 ha), twice its current size. It takes its name from a spring on the property. It was considered as a site for a cemetery by the then-village of Poughkeepsie in 1848. Vassar, a village trustee and founder of the nearby college that bears his name, bought the property from its last owner George Bloom Evertson for $8,000, intending to sell subscriptions to future plots at the cemetery to local investors, a common practice at the time. However, there were few takers. He had planned to develop the property as a private summer estate himself if the cemetery plan failed, and so he contracted Downing, who lived downriver in Newburgh, to begin planning the landscape for the property.
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