DIVE INTO THE SUBJECT
Jens Jensen The Living Green draws on a rich trove of archival material to bring its subject to life. The film features restored radio broadcast audio and 16mm footage of JENS JENSEN (1860-1951) himself - landscape architect, conservationist, founder of The Clearing school, and author of Siftings - recorded less than a decade before his death, when the surviving acetate recordings were badly degraded.
Alongside Jensen's own voice, the film includes archival video shot in the late 1980s and early 1990s of ALFRED CALDWELL, (1903-1998), a Prairie School architect who trained under Jensen and Mies van der Rohe, and carried Jensen's philosophy forward for another half century. Caldwell's firsthand recollections offer a rare bridge between Jensen's era and living memory.
FURTHER READING for those who want to go deeper, here is the scholarship that informed the film - histories of Jensen, The Prairie School, Chicago, and the fight for the Indiana Dunes.
Research
2002 - 2012
Research:
Carey Lundin, Mark Frazel
Bibliography
Jens Jensen's Writings
Jensen, Jens. Siftings. Chicago: Ralph Fletcher Seymour, 1939.
Jensen, Jens. A Greater West Park System. Chicago: West Park Commission, 1920.
Morrison, Darrel. Afterward to Siftings (American Land Classics). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.
Russell, Virginia L. “You Dear Old Prima Donna: The Letters of Frank Lloyd Wright and Jens Jensen.” Landscape Journal, vol. 20 no. 2, (January), 2001.
Primary Sources and Archives
Archival radio broadcast and 16mm footage of Jens Jensen (1860-1951), landscape architect, conservationist, author Siftings.
Archival videos shot from the late 1980s – to early 1990s of Alfred Caldwell (1903-1998), Jensen acolyte and friend, landscape architect, architect, protégé of Mies van der Rohe.
The Morton Arboretum. Special Collections. Jens Jensen Archive.
Chicago Park District Archives, Julia Bachrach, Historian/Archivist
Prairie Club Archives. Thomas Memorial Library, Chesterton, Ind.
Bentley Archives, Jensen Plans, University of Michigan
Grese, Robert E. Abstractions of Nature: Jensen Designed to Uplift the Spirit at the Eleanor and Edsel Ford Estate. Garden Design. Autumn, 1988.
Grese, Robert E. Jens Jensen Maker of Parks and Gardens (Creating the North American Landscape). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998.
Grese, Robert E. The Native Landscape Reader (Critical Perspectives in the History of Environmental Design) Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011.
Prairie Style and Landscape Architecture
Christy, Stephen F. The Growth of an Artist: Jens Jensen and Landscape Architecture. Master’s thesis. Dept. of Landscape Architecture. University of Wisconsin, 1976.
Condit, Carl. The Chicago School of Architecture: A History of Commercial and Public Building in the Chicago Area, 1875-1925. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 1998.
Domer, Dennis (ed.). Alfred Caldwell: The Life and Work of a Prairie School Landscape Architect. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997.
Eaton, Leonard K. Landscape Artist in America: The Life and Work of Jens Jensen. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.
Fulkerson, Mertha, and Ada Corson. The Story of The Clearing. Chicago: Coach House Press, 1972.
Hasbrouck, Wilbert. The Chicago Architectural Club: Prelude to the Modern. Chicago: The Monacelli Press, 2005.
Knudson, Berta. Abraham Lincoln Memorial Gardens Memoir. University of Illinois at Springfield Library Special Collections, 1975.
Lincoln Highway Association. The Lincoln Highway: The Story of a Crusade That Made Transportation History. New York: Dodd, Mead and Co., 1935.
Tishler, William H. (ed.) Midwestern Landscape Architecture. De Kalb: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
Tishler, William H. (ed.) American Landscape Architecture: Designers and Places. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1988.
Tishler, William H. and Erik M. Ghenoui. "Conservation pioneers: Jens Jensen and the Friends of our Native Landscape." Wisconsin Magazine of History. 86: 4, 2002-2003
Twombly, Robert C. "Frank Lloyd Wright: His Life and Architecture." New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1979.
Chicago Parks, Planning & Reform
Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull-House: With Autobiographical Notes. Dover Publications, 2008
Bachrach, Julia S., and Jo Ann Nathan. Inspired By Nature: The Garfield Park Conservatory and Chicago’s West Side. Chicago: Garfield Park Conservatory Alliance, 2008
Bachrach, Julia, The City in a Garden: A Photographic History of Chicago's Parks Second Ed. (Center for American Places - Center Books on American Places)
Chicago: Columbia College Chicago Press; 2nd Edition, 2012.
Burnham, Daniel, and Bennett, Edward. Plan of Chicago. Princeton Architectural Press, 1993.
Chicago, West Park Commission. A Plea for Playgrounds. Chicago: Special Park Commission, 1905.
Chicago Park District, Special Collections. Chicago Park District Offices, Chicago, IL.
Collier, Malcolm. Jens Jensen and Columbus Park. Chicago History 4, no. 4 (Winter) 1975.
Cronon, William. Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1992.
Miller, Wilhelm. The Prairie Style of Landscape Architecture. Architectural Record 40, no. 6 (December), 1916.
Maloney, Cathy. Chicago Gardens: The Early History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008.
Maloney, Cathy. The Gardener’s Cottage in Riverside, Illinois: Living in a "Small Masterpiece" by Frank Lloyd Wright, Jens Jensen, and Frederick Law Olmsted. Chicago: Columbia College Chicago Press, 2010.
Indiana Dunes &Conservation
Botts, Lee, and Bruce Krushelnicki. The Great Lakes: An Environmental Atlas & Resource Book. Washington: US EPA & Environment, 1988.
Cassidy, Victor. Henry Chandler Cowles, Pioneer Ecologist. Chicago: Kedzie Sigel Press, 2007.
Chaddock, Diane K. Wildflowers of the Dunes: A Guide to the Common Flowering Plants of the Michigan and Indiana Dunes. Baroda, MI: Sand Cress Books, Baroda, 1998.
Dabbert, James R., and J. Ronald Engel. The INDIANA DUNES REVEALED: The Art of Frank V. Dudley. University of Illinois Press, 2006.
Engel, J. Ronald. Sacred Sands: The Struggle for Community in the Indiana Dunes. Wesleyan, 1986.
Franklin, Kay and Norma Schaeffer. Duel for the Dunes: Land Use Conflict on the Shores of Lake Michigan. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1983.
Mather, Stephen. Report On the Proposed Sand Dunes National Park, Indiana. United States Dept. of The Interior. National Park Service. Nabu Press, 2010.
Democracy, Community, Chicago & Social History
Friends of Our Native Landscape (FONL). Proposed Park Areas in the State of Illinois: A Report with Recommendations. Chicago: Friends of Our Native Landscape, 1921.
Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Modern Library, 1993.
Knight, Louise W. Citizen. Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.
Mayer, Harold M., and Richard C. Wade. Chicago: Growth of a Metropolis. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973.
Pacyga, Dominic A. Chicago: A Biography. University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition, 2011.
Smith, Carl. The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City (Chicago Visions and Revisions). Chicago: University Of Chicago Press, 2007.
Smithson, Robert. “Frederick Law Olmsted and the Dialectical Landscape.” Artforum 11 (February) 1973.
Sullivan, Louis. The Autobiography of an Idea. New York: Press of the American Institute of Architects, 1924.
Wille, Lois, "Forever Open, Clear, and Free: The Historic Struggle for Chicago’s Lakefront. Chicago, Henry Regnery Co., 1972.
Contemporary Landscape & Sustainable Urbanism
Farr, Doug. Sustainable Urbanism: Urban Design With Nature. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2007.
Hales, Peter B. Silver Cities: Photographing American Urbanization, 1839-1939. University of New Mexico Press, 1980.
Hales, Peter B. The Hidden Hand: Jacob Riis’s Photographs. College Art Association. New York, 1982.
Hales, Peter B. William Henry Jackson and the Transformation of the American Landscape. Temple University Press, 1996.
Denmark
Rordam, Thomas. The Danish Folk Schools. Copenhagen: Der Danske Selskab, 1980.
Oakley, Stewart. A Short History of Denmark. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1972.
Takemoto, Patricia Akiko. “The Clearing: The Growth and Survival of an American Adult Education Institution in the Danish Folk School Tradition.” Ph.D. diss., Northern Illinois University, De Kalb, 1987.
Jensen drawing over actual Lincoln Memorial Garden council ring
Screengrab from film
Alfred Caldwell, from archival footage.
Frank Lloyd Wright. early portrait
Jane Addams, Hull House