Early Death
On July 28, 1852, Downing died along with 80 others when a fire broke out, amidship, just south of Yonkers, New York, on the steamer–the Henry Clay–while traveling on the Hudson River with his wife and her extended family. A boiler explosion quickly spread flames across the wooden vessel and Downing was consumed. A few ashen remains and his clothes were recovered days later.
Downing's remains were interred in Cedar Hill Cemetery, in his birthplace of Newburgh, New York.
Following Downing's death, Withers and Vaux took over his architectural practice. After his death, writer and friend Nathaniel Parker Willis referred to Downing as "our country's one solitary promise of a supply for ... scarcity of beauty coin in our every-day pockets. He was the one person who could be sent for... to look at fields and woods and tell what could be made out of them".
Read more about this topic: Andrew Jackson Downing
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