[PDF] A Greater West Park System eBook

Author : John Graf
Publisher : Arcadia Publishing
Page : 134 pages
File Size : 42,57 MB
Release : 2000
Category : History
ISBN : 9780738507163

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No other city in the world has a park system as great as Chicago's, which includes over 550 parks totaling more than 7,000 acres. Each park has its own story, as well as unique characteristics and history, and yet the majority of Chicagoans are not aware of the wealth, variety, and sheer number of parks that exist, to say nothing of the ideas they project, the history they commemorate, and the origins of their names. Chicago's Parks: A Photographic History seeks to remedy this oversight. From Chicago's first park, Dearborn Park, to its more famous parks of Grant and Lincoln, this book provides a wealth of information concerning the origins of the names and plans of these Chicago landmarks. A formal plan for the creation of a park system was developed in 1869, and soon Chicago had some of the greatest parks to be found anywhere in the world. When Chicago was founded in 1837, the city's fathers adopted the motto urbs in horto, or "the city set in a garden." Despite the numerous changes that have taken place over the past 160 years, Chicago is still a city set in a garden. Chicago's Parks: A Photographic History captures the growth of that "garden" with its nearly 200 historic photographs.

Author : Julia Sniderman Bachrach
Publisher : Garfield Park Conservatory alliance
Page : 150 pages
File Size : 33,53 MB
Release : 2008
Category : History
ISBN : 9780979412509

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A visual history traces the evolution of the Garfield Park Conservatory, which was originally designed as a poetic interpretation of the Midwest landscape in prehistoric times, and looks at its influence on the development of the park and boulevard system on Chicago's West Side.

Author : William H. Tishler
Publisher : Wisconsin Historical Society
Page : 185 pages
File Size : 13,41 MB
Release : 2012-09-28
Category : Gardening
ISBN : 0870206052

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Jens Jensen (1860-1951) was one of America's most distinguished landscape architects and a pioneering conservationist. During his long and productive career, this Danish-born visionary worked for and with some of the country's most prominent citizens and architects, including Henry Ford, Louis Sullivan, and Frank Lloyd Wright. He became internationally renowned for his design of landscapes throughout the Midwest and beyond, his contributions to the American conservation movement, and his design philosophy that emphasized the significance of nature in people's lives. He found inspiration in the landscape, particularly the plants native to a region, and was an environmentalist long before the term became popular. Today, Jensen is perhaps best remembered for establishing The Clearing on Wisconsin's Door County Peninsula. But the outspoken views in his writings - many of which were included in ephemeral planning reports, early newspapers, and now out-of-print journals - are virtually forgotten, with the exception of his two small books. "Jens Jensen: Writings Inspired by Nature" is an anthology of Jensen's most significant yet lesser-known articles, including a "Saturday Evening Post" piece that enabled him to reach the largest audience of his publishing career. The scope of Jensen's thoughts represented in this collection will further solidify his legacy and rightful place alongside conservation leaders such as John Muir and Aldo Leopold.

Author : Robert E. Grese
Publisher : JHU Press
Page : 326 pages
File Size : 19,51 MB
Release : 1992
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780801859472

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Jens Jensen was one of America's greatest landscape designers and conservationists. Using native plants and "fitting" designs, he advocated that our gardens, parks, roads, playgrounds, and cities should be harmonious with nature and its ecological processes--a belief that was to become a major theme of modern American landscape design. When Jensen died in 1951 at the age of 90, the New York Times called him "the dean of American landscape architecture." In Jens Jensen: Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens, Robert E. Grese evaluates Jensen's work against the background of landscape design traditions that included Andrew Jackson Downing and Frederick Law Olmsted, as well as earlier movements in Europe. Grese examines Jensen's part in the Chicago cultural renaissance that occurred just prior to World War I, a movement that brought social reform, a new understanding of ecology, organic trends in architecture, and great strides in American literature. Drawing on Jensen's writings and plans, interviews with people who knew him, and analyses of his projects, Grese presents a clear picture of Jensen's efforts to enhance and preserve "native" landscapes. Jens Jensen worked with some of the leading architects of his day--Sullivan and Wright among them--so many of his projects involved the extravagant estates of wealthy entrepreneurs in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and elsewhere. But Jensen also worked on schools, parks, playgrounds, hospitals, institutional homes, and government buildings. Long before environmental activists took over the idea, he foresaw the need to preserve the dunes, forests, prairies, and wetlands native to the Middle West. He championed the network of forest preserves around Chicago, protection of the Indiana Dunes (now a national lakeshore), the state park system in Illinois, and numerous parks in Wisconsin. Jens Jensen: Maker of Natural Parks and Gardens offers a compelling look at Jensen's visionary work and remarkable career.

Author : William H. Tishler
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
Page : 538 pages
File Size : 27,58 MB
Release : 2000
Category : Architecture
ISBN : 9780252025938

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This richly illustrated collection profiles the bold innovators in landscape architecture who, around the turn of the twentieth century, ventured into the nation's heartland to develop a new style of design celebrating the native midwestern landscape.The pioneers of landscape architecture in the Midwest are responsible for creating some of the most recognizable parks, cemeteries, recreation areas, and other public gathering places in the region.Midwestern Landscape Architectureincludes essays on Adolph Strauch, who introduced a new concept of visually integrated landscape treatment in Cincinnati's Spring Grove Cemetery; William Le Baron Jenney, designer of Chicago's diverse West Parks; and Jens Jensen, who created the American Garden in Union Park in Chicago (a celebration of native flora) and founder of The Clearing, a unique school of the arts and humanities in Wisconsin. Other major figures include Frederick Law Olmsted Sr., co-designer of New York's Central Park, whose work in the Midwest included the layout of the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition, and Ossian Cole Simonds, who helped reconcile the formal approach of the City Beautiful movement with the naturalism of the Prairie School in urban park design.This volume also details the contributions of crusaders for ecological awareness and an appreciation of the region's natural heritage. These include horticultural writer Wilhelm Miller, who spread the ideals of the Prairie style, and Genevieve Gillette, a landscape architect and conservationist whose preservation efforts led to the establishment of numerous Michigan state parks and wilderness areas.Midwestern Landscape Architecturefosters a better understanding of how landscape design took shape in the Midwest and how the land itself inspired new solutions to enhance its understated beauty. Despite Olmsted's assessment of the Illinois prairie as "one of the most tiresome landscapes that I ever met with," the Midwest has amassed an important legacy of landscape design that continues to influence how people interact with their environment in the heartland.