Jensen, Jens, 1860-1951

Mormon from Cottonwood Ward, Utah.

Jens Jensen was one of America's most visionary prairie school landscape architects.

Born in 1860 in Denmark, Jensen emigrated to the United States in 1884, settling in Chicago, where he was hired as a laborer for the park system. Advancing rapidly, he soon became foreman of Union and Humboldt parks. Fired in 1900 because he refused to participate in the political graft rampant in the city, Jensen began a private practice on the new estates of Chicago's wealthy North Shore.

Returning to West Parks in 1906 as chief landscape architect, he renovated deteriorating Garfield, Humboldt, Douglas and other smaller parks in his own distinctive style. These parks became the first public expression of the prairie style in American landscape architecture. Jensen's art was based on an intense knowledge of midwestern plantlife and ecosystems.

Characteristics include utilization of horizontal lines in landforms and stonework, the natural branching habits of plants, and the restoration and conservation of native plant materials. Jensen retired from the parks in 1920 to devote more time to his practice, Jensen's private work included collaborations with prairie school architects included Louis Sullivan, Hugh Garden, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

A leading spokesperson for park reform, Jensen formed the Prairie Club and the Friends of Our Native Landscape, which were instrumental in the development of the Illinois state park system, Indiana Dunes State Park, and environmental policy in Michigan and Wisconsin. In 1935 he built a school called The Clearing in Wisconsin.

One of America's most important and visionary landscape architects, Jens Jensen (1860-1951) held a deep-seated reverence for the beauty of the natural world, believing that time spent with nature is a necessity for the human soul. His "natural parks and gardens" were designed to offer opportunities for spiritual renewal, connections with the rhythms of nature, and an awareness of the unity of all things. He hoped, and it was part of his intent, that such experiences would both enrich people's lives and encourage them to appreciate and value remaining wild areas that were fast disappearing. Passionately integrating his work as artist, conservationist, ecologist, philosopher, and teacher, Jensen acquired an intimate knowledge of the Midwestern landscape in all its seasons.

Born into a prosperous Danish family, Jensen chose to emigrate to the United States with his fiancee at age twenty-four rather than remain on the family's ancestral farm, working for short periods in Florida and Iowa before settling in Chicago. Initially hired as a street cleaner with the park service, he quickly worked his way up in the system. On weekends during these years, the family traveled by rail to the prairie countryside surrounding the city, and Jensen undertook what was to become a lifelong intense study of the plants and landscape of the region -- a study that would richly inform his art. In 1888, early in his career, Jensen planted an "American garden" in a corner of Union Park, utilizing familiar perennial wildflowers set against a background of native trees and shrubs. By 1895 he was named superintendent of Union Park, and by 1896 his responsibilities included Humboldt Park, one of the largest on the west side of the city. While the work Jensen loved the best and considered "the meaning of his life" were parks created for the general public, he refused to participate in the political graft that was rampant in Chicago municipal politics during the decade of the nineties and was dismissed in 1900.

Jensen was active in progressive social and environmental reform movements that evolved in the city in the 1890s, such as Hull-House, the Committee on the Universe, and the Geographic Society of Chicago, where he developed friendships and made contacts that contributed to the development of a private practice after he lost his job. Working mainly on estates of the wealthy elite along Chicago's North Shore, he experimented with a variety of design ideas in the next few years, gradually solidifying many of the theories and methods that would become part of his unique and distinctive regional style (characterized by Wilhelm Miller in 1915 as the "prairie style" of landscape design, with its emphasis on conservation and restoration of native flora; the repetition of horizontal lines in land forms and stonework; and the natural branching habits of plants). As his design practice grew, Jensen established friendships with Chicago architects who were creating buildings in a prairie style -- organically influenced designs reflecting the broad, horizontal lines of the American Midwest. Notable for its representation of a mature approach is his design for the Harry Rubens estate in Glencoe, Illinois in 1902 (George W. Maher, architect), with its quiet and harmonious use of massed native plants; waterways, pools and cascades edged with stratified stonework reminiscent of Midwestern rivers and streams; broad open meadows and shady retreats; and meandering pathways. Trees with brilliant fall color were placed to catch the afterglow of the setting sun, and hawthorns and crabapples sited to add color to the forest border. Other important projects Jensen undertook with prairie school architects are the Henry Babson place in Riverside, Illinois, with Louis Sullivan; the I.B. Grommes place in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, with Richard Schmidt; Manitowoc High School in Wisconsin with Dwight Perkins; and the A.C. Magnus Place in Winnetka, Illinois with Robert Spencer. Jensen collaboration with Frank Lloyd Wright includes the Avery Coonley House in Riverside, Illinois, the Avery Coonley School and Kindergarten in Downers Grove, Illinois, the Sherman M. Booth place in Glencoe, Illinois, and the Abby Beecher Roberts place in Marquette, Michigan

When Bernard A. Eckhart, a respected civic-minded businessman, was appointed chairman of the West Park Commission in 1905 as part of a reform movement, Jensen was rehired as superintendent and landscape architect. With a mandate from Eckhart and funding from the state legislature, he spent the next several years rehabilitating and improving seriously deteriorating West Parks. He drained an inefficient pond in Douglas Park and created a picturesque meadow, surrounding it with woodlands and adding a new boat landing, a music court and pavilions. In Garfield Park he constructed a dramatic conservatory reminiscent of Midwestern haystacks, filling it with representative prehistoric prairie plantings, incorporating water as a complete system -- spring, cascade, brook, and lake. At Humboldt Park he developed "prairie river gardens" resembling slow moving streams on the prairie. The tranquil water course was made up of several branches with cascades of stratified rock simulating bluffs and ravines, and riverbanks planted generously with native wetland plants. During this period, he also prepared designs for small playgrounds and recreation areas that were to be scattered throughout the West Chicago area.

In 1916, Jensen designed Columbus Park, considered among his masterpieces, and the one which he regarded as most successful of his park designs. It was a project he relished and undertook from the heart -- in response, he once said, to the enchantment of the message of the prairies. The center was kept open to suggest the broad expanse of a prairie, horizontally branched hawthorns utilized to echo prairie views, and a linear lagoon edged and filled with masses of rushes, cat-tails, hibiscus, and water lilies. The rustic swimming pools, with their rock walls of natural horizontal limestone ledges planted with rock plants in the crevices, were designed to allow city children to experience native swimming holes. Instead of traditional playground equipment, areas were designed for creative and imaginative play in "wild" natural settings. For outdoor drama and pageants, Jensen set a "player's hill" on the rise between two brooks. Two of Jensen's trademark "council rings" were also part of the design. These low, circular, stone seats set around a fire pit, planned to be used for storytelling, conversation, music, or dance, were the only architectural element regularly incorporated into a Jensen design. Resembling Native American council fires and kivas of the Pueblos, the rings were also reminiscent of the camp fires of pioneers crossing the prairie, and were viewed by Jensen as a symbol of democracy, encouraging companionship with others and with nature.

Between and during appointments with the park system, Jensen was a leading spokesperson for park reform and park planning. In his Special Park Commission work from 1899 to 1904 he helped survey potential parklands and natural areas for preservation, laying the groundwork for many park improvements and contributing to the establishment of the Cook County Forest Preserve District in 1913. In 1911, as chairman of the Chicago City Club's Committee on City Planning, he published an article entitled "Regulating City Building," in which he addressed planning issues, proposing collaboration among engineers, architects, businessmen, sculptors, and landscape architects to guide development and growth. Questioning an excessive commercial emphasis, Jensen proposed that the city emphasize its homelike qualities -- the American home as "centering the force of city planning." Jensen's Committee report, A Greater West Park System, although never implemented, illustrates theories he evolved on the role of open spaces in a city and the role of parks in urban design. Components include an integrated network of open spaces and "pleasure drives" connecting parklands, a canal connecting the Chicago and Des Plaines rivers for boating, several new parks, neighborhood kitchen gardens, neighborhood cultural centers on school sites, an agricultural college, an art school, and in-depth analysis of then available lands to fit into an overall system. The heart of the plan was his image of neighborhood cultural centers. Jensen believed schools "lacked soul," spaces and places designed to encourage creativity, and were underutilized for supporting lifelong learning. His design for the Lloyd School Center, for example, illustrates the way homes, businesses, commercial areas, and open spaces might be integrated into an urban setting, incorporating areas for senior citizens, gardens, swimming, playing fields and outdoor theater.

Jensen retired from the park system soon after his West Park study was published in 1920, devoting more time to his design office and conservation. In 1909 he had changed his position with West Parks to Consulting Landscape Architect and in the intervening years his estate work grew dramatically. In 1910 he designed an estate for Sears and Roebuck founder Julius Rosenwald on the ravines of Highland Park overlooking Lake Michigan, developing a lasting relationship with the Rosenwald's that would spill over into support for conservation projects. In 1914, he began to work with Henry and Clara Ford on their Fair Lane estate in Dearborn, Michigan. While his relationship with the Ford's began amiably, it became marked with difficulties, ending when Mrs. Ford elected to make changes Jensen felt seriously interfered with the integrity of his design -- particularly the placing of a rose garden in the middle of one of his meadow spaces. The dam and rock work along the Rouge River at Fair Lane, however, remains today the best example of Jensen's masterly use of stratified limestone. Jensen continued to create projects for the Ford family and Ford Motor Company for about twenty years, designing the grounds of Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, the sites of numerous Ford office buildings, portions of Greenfield Village, and four homes for Eleanor and Edsel Ford. Other notable private work includes the E.L. Ryerson Estate, Lake Forest, Illinois; the Frank W. Aldrich Place, Bloomington, Illinois; the Harley Clark Place, Evanston, Illinois; the Harold Florsheim Place, Highland Park, Illinois; the Wallace W. Gill Place, Glencoe, Illinois, and the Herbert Kurth Place, Mequon, Wisconsin.

In this same period, Jensen undertook public design work beyond the Chicago parks. Significant projects include St. Ann's Hospital, Chicago, Illinois; the "ideal section" of the Lincoln Highway, Lake County, Indiana (a prototype for roadway plantings reflecting a prairie setting); a park system for Racine, Wisconsin; the Shakespeare Garden at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois; and the Lincoln Memorial Garden in Springfield, Illinois. Jensen was involved with the development of the Lincoln Garden from 1939 until his last illness a year before he died, integrating many of his trademark features with heightened attention to organic change, natural processes and succession in native ecosystems. It is one of few remaining designs that is still used the way he envisioned it, and is said to best represent his mature thinking and approach to landscape architecture.

Jensen's long and active participation in numerous Chicago organizations had expanded over the years to include the City Club, the Cliff Dwellers, Municipal Science Club, Municipal Art League, Chicago Playground Association, Chicago Art Institute, and the Chicago Architects Club. These associations provided him not only intellectual stimulation, friendships, and a network for potential clients, but also an opportunity to acquaint himself with others who shared his strong interest in conservation. The two groups he formed, the Prairie Club and Friends of Our Native Landscape, were networks of botanists, writers, politicians, artists, social workers, philanthropists, and others with whom he devoted a great deal of time championing environmental causes. Both organizations, for example, spent years fighting for protection of the Indiana Dunes, finally achieved in 1926 when Indiana set aside 2,250 acres as Indiana Dunes State Park. The Friends, with its emphasis on Illinois state acquisition of wild and scenic areas (rather than the traditional historic), played an important role in establishing the present system of state parks in Illinois and significantly influenced public policy in Michigan and Wisconsin.

In 1935, after the death of his wife, Jensen left Chicago to devote more time to writing and speaking on conservation causes and to live in closer contact with nature, building a school and home on a remote northern tip of Wisconsin Door Country. Jensen based the curriculum of the school he called The Clearing on his experiences in Danish folk schools and agricultural schools, which he had attended as a young man in Denmark. Both stressed a relationship to a region and to the soil itself, providing Jensen with an intuitive philosophical base that rooted his conservation and ecological interests and his landscaping career. Jensen's students were encouraged to learn by doing, integrating an intellectual life with the development of practical skills, social responsibility and environmental stewardship. Jensen spent the last years of his life building the school, teaching, writing, welcoming visitors, traveling and lecturing -- a tireless crusader for preservation efforts, constantly stressing the necessity of setting aside large tracts of wilderness for future generations. With his students, he continued to explore the landscape itself -- its dunes, bogs, swamps, cliffs, rocks, forests, fields, rivers, streams, pools, prairies, ledges, and lakes -- sharing his fervent belief that nature stirs and quiets the soul, providing sustenance for the imagination and inner harmony.