Dropping out of school, he became a lithographer and from 1826 he worked as a draftsman for Josiah R. Brady, a New York architect who was an early exponent of the Gothic Revival style.

[2] Davis made a first independent career as an architectural illustrator in the 1820s,[1] but his friends, especially painter John Trumbull, convinced him to turn his hand to designing buildings.

In 1826, Davis began working in the office of Ithiel Town and Martin E. Thompson, the most prestigious architectural firm of the Greek Revival.

[3][4] From 1829, in partnership with Town, Davis formed the first recognizably modern architectural office and designed many late Classical buildings, including some of public prominence.

The resulting capitol in Columbus, Ohio, often attributed to the Hudson River School painter Thomas Cole consulting with Davis and Ithiel Town,[5] has a stark Greek Doric order colonnade across a recessed entrance, flanked by recessed window bays that continue the rhythm of the central portico, all under a unique drum capped by a low saucer dome.

Two years after its completion, Davis was hired to design the Dutch Reformed Church upriver in Newburgh, inspired by the Temple of Poseidon, both positioned for the viewing of maritime travelers.

Unfortunately, the Panic of 1837 cut short his plans for a series of like volumes, but Davis soon formed a partnership with Andrew Jackson Downing, illustrating his widely read books.

He designed Blandwood, the 1846 home of Governor John Motley Morehead that stands as America's earliest Italianate Tuscan Villa.

[11] The success of "Winyah Park" and "Lathers's Hill" generated other important commissions for Davis in New Rochelle, including two cottage-villas, Wildcliff and Sans Souci, which he designed for members of a prominent Davenport family.

At the Virginia Military Institute, Jackson's designs from 1848 through the 1850s created the first entirely Gothic revival college campus, built in brick and stuccoed to imitate stone.

[14] Davis's plan for the Barracks quadrangle was interrupted by the Civil War; it was sympathetically completed to designs of Bertram Goodhue in the early 20th century.

He built little in the last thirty years of his life, but spent his easy retirement in West Orange drawing plans for grandiose schemes that he never expected to build, and selecting and ordering his designs and papers, by which he was determined to be remembered.