Visiting Jensen in Chicago

8/16/2008

I recently had an article published in Landscape Architecture Magazine about Jens Jensen.  Here's a little sidebar to that piece (read the whole thing here), that is very much in the spirit of the Treeline Travelogue.  If you're in Chi-town and in need of a little inspiration from a master, check out these sites:

Garfield Park Conservatory. 

Just a short El ride from the Loop (take the green line to the Conservatory stop), the conservatory is a stunning example of Jensen’s plantsmanship and stonework – even though the plants are not native. 

The Fern Room, in particular, sets the tone for every other conservatory.  It is easy to forget you are inside, and Jensen’s mastery of sight lines is evident.

Mahoney Farm.  On the south edge of ultra-rich northern suburb Kenilworth, this small nature preserve has a collection of council rings arranged around a pair of woodland meadows. 

Sheridan Road cuts the lakeside site in half, and the inland half is definitely the better of the two.  The site shows how Jensen used specimen plants as view termini and how he crafted outdoor rooms with nothing but trees and shrubs of various heights and shapes.

Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool. 

Though not a Jensen work – it was designed by his protégé, the pool’s namesake – this landscape in Lincoln Park just northeast of the zoo is a superbly restored (by Wolff Landscape Architects) example of a prairie style water feature. 

Humboldt Park Prairie River.  To see an example of what Chicago Park District historian and Jensen expert Julia Bachrach describes as “a solution that addresses both Jensen and new uses,” head to this west-side park and stroll the restored watercourse. 

Prairie rivers appear in several of Jensen’s designs, but this one had been altered from his original design to include large open pools for swimming.  It has now been been re-done in the prairie-style spirit with ecologically appropriate plantings and hydrology by Elmhurst-based Conservation Design Forum. The river generally follows its original course and the swimming holes are off to the side behind a sculpted berm.

 

Council Rings

4/30/2008

Because I am writing an article on Jens Jensen, I have been visiting a lot of council rings.  Jensen was a landscape architect that practiced in the midwest throughout the first half of the last century.  He is known as the originator of the "prairie school" of landscape architecture, and the best-known purveyor of the style.   His portfolio includes several of Chicago's major parks, as well as private estates in Illinois, Michigan, and Wisconsin. 

 

Jensen designed council rings for many of his landscapes.  He saw them as an expression of democracy, as well as touchstones (pardon the pun) of the prairie aesthetic.  Here are a few examples of council rings by (and inspired by) Jensen.

 

This one is at the respectfully named Jens Jensen Park in Highland Park, Illinois. 

This small triangle of open space is located near where Jensen had his private office.  An etched stone at the site says the park was renovated in 2007 by landscape architects Amy and Nick Patera.  Judging by the large number of etched stones, there was also (literal) buy-in by plenty of community members.  I like how the circle is interrupted by the tree, and the varied face of the wall is quite interesting.

 

At Techny Prairie Park in Northbrook, a portion of an interpretive trail discusses Jensen's career in the area.  The park's landscape architect, Hitchcock Design Group, included this council ring, with a fire circle in the middle.

Jensen mixed up what he populated his circles with.  Some have fire pits, some stone hearths, some nothing at all.  This project is pretty new.  Some age might soften it a bit.

 

Kenilworth's Mahoney Farm Bird Sanctuary, occupying a few acres on the Lake Michigan shore a few towns north of Chicago, has a large collection of council rings.

The whole site is on the National Register of Historic Places, and these rings are quintessentially Jensen: nestled in the woods, thin-lift outcropping limestone, and well-planned views.

(save the condo project in the background).  The several rings at Mahoney are about 20 feet across. 

 

Jensen's only council ring within Chicago is at Columbus Park, on the city's far west side.  It is about 40 feet across.

It was restored in 2003 by Wolff Landscape Architecture.  When they got a hold of it, the stone columns were mostly toppled, and the seats were half-buried, cracked, and scattered about.  Image courtesy Wolff Landscape Architecture.

This is an excellent example of a different type of ring, with piers instead of a continuous wall.  It makes for a different look, but is less structurally sound.  Wolff re-engineered the council ring by putting steel brackets below the stone seats to bear the weight.

It's pretty inconspicuous.  What makes this sing, though (as with most of Jensen's stone work, according to several landscape architects and a historian I have met with), is the stone itself.  That narrow, weathered face limestone is tough to find, so restoration with original stone makes a big difference. 

 

The Alfred Caldwell Lily Pool, designed in the 1930s by its namesake landscape architect, is considered by some to be the best surviving example of a prairie style landscape.  It is surviving because of an extensive restoration executed in the early 2000s by the Chicago Park District, Lincoln Park Conservancy, and Wolff Landscape Architecture (then Wolff Clements & Associates). 

This ring is located atop a hill overlooking the pool and its two wood pavilions.  It has a very formal (by prairie style standards) walkway leading to it, and the walls have some of the thinnest lifts of stone I've seen, and also the most "jagged."

Though this ring occupies a commanding position, it is still intimate, nestled into a small grove of trees.  This is key to prairie style design: seclusion simultaneous with well-calculated vantage points.  Picture a little woodlot at the edge of an open grassland and you'll see what these landscape architects were going for.

 

For the next month or so, I'll be looking at some of these and other "nouveau-Jensen" projects, considering the man's pertinence to designers today.  My best guess will appear this summer/fall in Landscape Architecture Magazine.  Stay tuned....

 

The Farnsworth House

4/28/2008

Humble Plano, Illinois, a small farmtown about 2 hours southwest of downtown Chicago, is, unexpectedly, home to one of the defining works of architecture in the United States.  The Farnsworth House, Mies van der Rohe's glass box on stilts, was an early attempt at applying the International School to residential architecture.  It inspired Philip Johnson's somewhat even more famous Glass House in New Canaan Connecticut (even though it was completed later). 

 

I visited Farnsworth last Sunday.  Spring was just poking its green fingers through the soil and the Fox River was full.  The floodplain in which the house sits was still raw from winter, seemingly fresh-mown.  Clutches of Virginia bluebells and early meadow rue colored the earth.  The house itself was hard-edged in contrast, and startlingly bright amidst the patterned grey tree trunks. 

I always thought the International Style was about being apart form the landscape, about creating an unornamented space that could, theoretically, be plunked anywhere.  I now have a new perspective.

 

When Mies began work on the house in the late 1940s, Dr. Edith Farnsworth had already purchased the Fox River Valley acreage, which included both upland and lowland areas.  Mies chose the floodplain.  Our tour guide (who, lucky for us, happened to be the site director) said she believed Mies picked that location so that he could make a house that could only be built in the floodplain.  The critical proof of that (and evidence, to me, of the skill of the designer) is how the house floats.

Yes, it's on stilts, but that's not why it seems to float.  The entire structure is designed so that there is no place within the house that you can see those support posts touch the ground.  The stairs that ascend to the lower terrace and the posts that support that terrace are likewise invisible. 

How?  An extremely simple detail: The posts end below the level of the terrace, and are out of the signt line of the home's windows. 

And the main living "box" is elevated just enough to make it impossible to see its own posts touch the ground.  This is an exercise in sight lines and geometry skillfully executed.  Though totally without ornament, the Farnsworth House is highly detailed.  Inches matter here, more so than immediately apparent.  The corners of the home and terrace, for instance, sport coped C-channels, so that they can appear perfectly smooth, without apparent joints.

By many accounts (even our tour guide's) Mies was a bit of a tyrant (she shared the story of Mies sitting on site, cigar and martini at the ready, watching workers parade slabs of travertine in front of him and passing judgement on their quality), but he was certainly meticulous -- and it shows in this house.

 

The building has a fascinating history (which you can read here), but, in a nutshell, Dr. Farnsworth sold it to Lord Palumbo (a collector of celebrity houses), who restored it twice -- in 1972 and again after a major flood in 1996.  It was bought in 2003 at auction by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and Landmarks Illinois. 

 

According to the site director, they're still discovering and debating all the little things Mies did inside and outside the house.  Case in point: I happened to ask which way the river flowed, then commented that it was certainly important that the terrace is offset from the house in the downstream direction, as if it were flowing with the river.  That, apparently, hasn't been considered before.  Which proves a good design, like this one, will reveal itself gradually over time.

 

 

I'd consider the Farnsworth House an architectural history pilgrimage site, along with others like Fallingwater, the Glass House, and Columbus, Indiana.  They say it's great in any weather, any season.  All the pertinent info is available here (reservations are required).  If you're in Chicago, it is definitely worth the sidetrip.