The Architect's Dream

A man in a dressing gown lounges on a stack of books at the top of an enormous column, surveying a world made entirely of buildings. Thomas Cole painted this in 1840 for the architect Ithiel Town, who wanted something for his library. On the right, sunlit Greek temples, a Roman aqueduct, an Egyptian pyramid and obelisk stretch toward the horizon. On the left, in shadow and framed by dark cypress trees, rises a Gothic church spire that looks a lot like Trinity Church in New Haven, one of Town's own designs. The whole history of building, laid out like a daydream, with the dreamer perched above it all. Cole even signed the base of the column with a note that he painted it for "I. Town, Arch't."

The funny part is that Town hated it. He had expected a landscape, the sort of American wilderness scene that made Cole famous as the founder of the Hudson River School. Instead he got this architectural fantasy, and he returned it. Cole took the painting back and settled the account with other works. Town did lend Cole something valuable, though: his library of roughly 11,000 volumes, among the largest architectural collections in the country, which gave Cole the details for every temple and arch here. Look at the green curtain pulled back at the edges, a theatrical touch that tells you none of this is real. It is a stage set for someone's ambition.