Jens Jensen (September 13, 1860 – October 1, 1951) was a Danish-American landscape architect.

He also helped establish Jens Jensen Park near his home and the Ravinia Music Festival grounds, as well as the grounds of nearby Green Bay and Ravinia elementary schools.

In the 1910s, Jensen played a role in building support for the preservation of part of the Indiana Dunes sand dune ecosystem, also near Chicago, thwarting industrialization plans of J. P. Morgan and Andrew Carnegie.

Private practice

In 1920, he retired from the park system and started his own landscape architecture practice. He worked on private estates and municipal parks throughout the U.S. He was commissioned by Eleanor and Edsel Ford for four residences, three in Michigan and one in Maine, between 1922 and 1935. Other projects included the Morse Dell Plain House and Garden (1926) at Hammond, Indiana and the William Whitaker Landscape and House (1929) at Crown Point, Indiana.

A major landscape project, with Edsel Ford, was for 'Gaukler Point', the Edsel and Eleanor Ford House designed by architect Albert Kahn in 1929, on the shores of Lake St. Clair in Grosse Pointe Shores, Michigan for Edsel Ford and his wife. Jensen did the master plan and designed the estate's gardens. He employed his traditional 'long view,' giving visitors a glimpse of the residence down the long meadow after the passing the entry gates, then only brief partial views along the long drive, and only at the end revealing the entire house and another view back up the long meadow.

The 'Gaukler Point' gardens and residence are now a public historical landscape and house museum and on the National Register of Historic Places.

He also designed the gardens for Edsel and Eleanor's summer estate 'Skylands' in Bar Harbor on Mount Desert Island in Maine (1922). Jensen did design work for their two other Michigan residences, one being 'Haven Hill,' between 1922 and 1935.

thumb|right|John Burroughs grotto, [[Fair Lane|Henry Ford Estate]]

For Clara and Henry Ford Jensen employed his 'delayed view' approach in designing the arrival at the residence of their estate, Fair Lane, in Dearborn, Michigan. Instead of proceeding straight to the house or even seeing it, the entrance drive leads visitors through the estate's dense woodland areas. Bends in the drive, planted on the curves' inside arc with large trees give a feeling of a natural reason for the turn, and obscure any long view. Suddenly, the visitor is propelled out of the forest and in the open space where the residence is presented fully in view in front of them. This idea of wandering was one which Jens put forth in almost all of his designs. Expansive meadows and gardens make up the larger landscape, with naturalistic massings of flowers surrounding the house. The largest axial meadow, the "Path of the Setting Sun" is aligned so that on the summer solstice the setting sun glows through a precise parting of the trees at meadow's end. The boathouse, with stonework cliffs designed by Jensen, allowed Henry Ford to travel on the Rouge River in his electric boat. Currently 72 acres (290,000 m²) of the original estate are preserved as a historic landscape and with the house are a museum, and a National Historic Landmark.

Jensen did other projects for Henry Ford including: The Dearborn Inn, Dearborn, Michigan, in 1931 (architect Albert Kahn, the first airport hotel in the country and National Historic Landmark); the Henry Ford Hospital; the Greenfield Village historic re-creation and its Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn; and the 'Ford Pavilion' at the 1933 Chicago Century of Progress Exposition. In 1923, he designed Lincoln High School in Manitowoc, Wisconsin, on a area on Lake Michigan. A number of projects with Jensen designed landscapes are listed on the National Register of Historic Places including the Jens Jensen Summer House and Studio, Rosewood Park, the May Theilgaard Watts House (architect; John S. Van Bergen), The A.G. Becker Property (architect; Howard Van Doren Shaw), The Samuel Holmes House (architect; Robert Seyfarth) and the Harold Florshiem estate (architect; Ernest Grunsfeld), all of which are located in Highland Park, Illinois where Jensen lived.

thumb|right|Entrance to "The Clearing"

In 1935, after the death of his wife, Jensen moved from Highland Park, Illinois to Ellison Bay, Wisconsin where he established The Clearing Folk School, which he called a "school of the soil" to train future landscape architects. It is now preserved as open space and an education center in the folk school tradition.

In his maturity, Jensen designed Lincoln Memorial Garden in Springfield, Illinois. This plan was completed in 1935 and planted from 1936 to 1939.

Jens Jensen died at his home, now The Clearing Folk School on October 1, 1951, at the age of 91.

Collaborations

Jens Jensen partnered with architect Howard Van Doren Shaw. In the course of his long career he worked with many well known architects including Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright, George Maher, Albert Kahn and Benjamin H. Marshall (architect).

See also

  • History of landscape architecture
  • History of gardens

References

Further reading

  • Russell, Virginia L., "You Dear Old Prima Donna: The Letters of Frank Lloyd Wright and Jens Jensen," Landscape Journal 20.2 (2001): 141-155.
  • Egan, Dave, and William H. Tishler. "Jens Jensen, Native Plants, and the Concept of Nordic Superiority." Landscape Journal 18.1 (1999): 11-29.
  • Grese, Robert E., Jens Jensen: Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 1998
  • Groening, Gert and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn. "Response: If the Shoe Fits, Wear it!" Landscape Journal 13.1 (1994): 62-3.
  • Groening, Gert, and Joachim Wolschke-Bulmahn. "Some Notes on the Mania for Native Plants in Germany." Landscape Journal 11.2 (1992): 116-26.
  • Kling, Samuel. "Regional Plans and Regional Plants: Jens Jensen's Vernacular Landscape and Metropolitan Planning in Chicago, 1904-1920." Journal of Urban History 44.6 (November 2018): 1154-1175. [https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0096144218766012]
  • Sorvig, Kim. "Natives and Nazis: An Imaginary Conspiracy in Ecological Design, Commentary on G. Groening and J. Wolschke-Bulmahn's "Some Notes on the Mania for Native Plants in Germany"." Landscape Journal 13.1 (1994): 58-61.
  • Telfer, Sid, The Jens Jensen I Knew
  • (uncited) "Jensen Will Open School of Nature " (continued ) Door County Advocate, Volume 74, Number 14, June 14, 1935
  • The Cultural Landscape Foundation, "It Takes One: Carey Lundin"
  • Official website of the film Jens Jensen The Living Green.
  • Jens Jensen Legacy Project
  • Official 'The Clearing' website
  • Official Edsel & Eleanor Ford 'Gaukler Point' website – gardens and museum.
  • Official Edsel & Eleanor Ford 'Haven Hill' museum website.
  • Official Henry Ford 'Fair Lane' website – gardens and museum.
  • Virtual tour of the Henry and Clara Ford 'Fair Lane' estate.
  • [http://chicagowildernessmag.org/issues/spring2001/jensjensen.html] – Chicago Wilderness Magazine: "Jens Jensen" — Spring 2001 issue.
  • Forest Preserve District: Jens Jensen
  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20100919214541/http://highlandparkhistory.com/art_hist_web/artists/artists.htm] – Highland park history: artists
  • Sterling Morton Library – Landscape drawings in the Suzette Morton Davidson Special Collections.
  • "Chicago's Columbus Park:The Prairie Idealized" – a National Park Service Teaching with Historic Places (TwHP) lesson plan.
  • Designing in the Prairie Spirit An online film that features Jensen's influences on landscape design today.