The Woodlands

View The Woodlands in a larger map

Visit our Tour Destination: Pennsylvania page to see the entire tour of the state’s Save America’s Treasures sites.

The Woodlands mansion, home of William Hamilton (1745-1813).
Photo courtesy of The Woodlands Trust for Historic Preservation.

The Woodlands

4000 Woodland Avenue

Philadelphia, PA

Website:  The Woodlands

The Treasure:  Once the centerpiece of a large 18th century Philadelphia estate, The Woodlands mansion is a classic example of early Federal architecture.

Accessibility:  The grounds of The Woodlands are open from dawn to dusk. Check the website for information on events and tours.

Historic photo of The Woodlands mansion, circa 1900.
Photo courtesy of The Woodlands Trust
for Historic Preservation.

Background:  The west side of the Schuylkill River still reflects some of the botanical glory of its heyday in the late 18th century. Pioneering botanists John and William Bartram lived and worked along the banks here. And just around the river bend north of the Bartram estate was The Woodlands, a magnificent property developed by William Hamilton (1745-1813) as a base for his botanical pursuits.

Hamilton based his property design on English picturesque landscapes. Among the admirers of Hamilton's work was Thomas Jefferson who claimed it was the only American landscape that could compete with the best of Europe: “(T)he only rival which I have known in America to what may be seen in England.” In his greenhouses, Hamilton cultivated both imported plants and American native plants, notably including some seeds brought from the Lewis and Clark expeditions.

Hamilton was equally ambitious with his architectural choices. When he inherited the land in his early 20s, he built a classical villa and ornamented it with what may have been the first monumental portico in Philadelphia. Twenty years later, Hamilton rebuilt the house in the new style of British architects Robert and James Adam—converting his Woodlands mansion into one of the first American examples of the newly emerging Federal style.

During restoration, the original 18th century
wooden posts were exposed for the first
time in more than two centuries.
Photo courtesy of the Woodlands Trust
for Historic Preservation.

You can stroll through The Woodlands today and feel the draw of the past. In truth the landscape of The Woodlands is now more reflective of the Victorian rural cemetery tradition (the Woodlands Cemetery Company has flourished here since 1840), but much of the spirit of Hamilton remains. The Woodlands mansion remains a stunning reminder of Philadelphia’s tradition of grand estates. Save America’s Treasures funding contributed to historical research and restoration focused upon the portico, preserving a record of its original configuration and subsequent modifications in 1786, 1789, and the early 19th century, as well as roof restoration on the historic main carriage house.

Notes from the Editor:  My friend and co-worker Edith Mulhern wrote an eloquent love letter to the Woodland Cemetery:

Dear Woodlands Cemetery:

I’m so glad I found you. I spent years wandering in less lovely spots, and you were just lurking behind those gates across from the trolley portal…

Enjoy the rest of her tribute at Philly Love Notes!

In addition to the work on the mansion's portico, Save America's Treasures
funding was used to replace the deteriorated roofing and downspouts on the
historic main carriage house.
Photo courtesy of The Woodlands Trust for Historic Preservation.

Historic print of the entrance to The Woodlands Cemetery.
Image courtesy of The Woodlands Trust for Historic Preservation.

Other Recommended Sites:  For more botanical glory along the Schuylkill River, visit nearby Historic Bartram’s Garden, the oldest surviving botanic garden in the country and the home of the Bartram family (father John and sons John Jr. and William), friends and neighbors of William Hamilton.

A view of The Woodlands Cemetery.
Photo courtesy of The Woodlands Trust for Historic Preservation.

Tour America's History Itinerary

Taking a short sabbatical:  Will return for more Pennsylvania destinations in mid-April 2013.

© 2013 Lee Price

Destination: Pennsylvania

View Western Pennsylvania in a larger map

View Central Pennsylvania in a larger map

View Eastern Pennsylvania in a larger map

View Philadelphia in a larger map

I’ve chosen Pennsylvania for our next Tour America’s History destination in order to capitalize on the state’s current multi-year Save Pennsylvania’s Past initiative and the upcoming Pennsylvania’s 10 Most Endangered Artifacts campaign. Through my work at the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts in Philadelphia, I’m closely connected with both programs and eager to use my blog resources to promote them!

In January 2012, Tour America’s History was launched with a brief Philadelphia spotlight featuring blog entries on a dozen key sites. Those entries will now be folded into the mix as we move on to celebrate approximately 80 more sites in the state. The tour will bounce all around Pennsylvania, with major stops in Scranton, Bethlehem, Lancaster, Harrisburg, Titusville, Gettysburg, Johnstown, and, of course, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia—uncovering fascinating history all along the way.

Included within this group are 15 collections where the conservation treatment work was conducted at my work place, the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts. In several cases, I was even involved with the preparation of the grant requests to Save America’s Treasures. I’ll try not to play favorites, but, well… some of these places are very special to me.

I’ve worked in Pennsylvania for over 30 years and it was my home state for 15 years (before I crossed the Delaware River to New Jersey). Pennsylvania is a beautiful state abounding with rich history. It’ll be a pleasure to cover these sites.

For a more professional orientation to Pennsylvania tourism, there’s the official website VisitPA.com. Naturally, big cities like Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have helpful tourist websites and so do many of the smaller cities and towns. A little googling should bring up plenty of advice on regional events, transportation, hotels, and restaurants.

Our Tour America’s History exploration of Pennsylvania’s 89 Save America’s Treasures sites begins next Tuesday.

That's me at Fallingwater, a Frank Lloyd Wright
architectural masterpiece in western Pennsylvania.

Tour America's History Itinerary

Tuesday’s destination:  The Woodlands

© 2013 Lee Price

Feehan Memorial Library, Mundelein Seminary

View Feehan Memorial Library, Mundelein Seminary in a larger map

Visit our Tour Destination: Illinois page to see the entire tour of the state’s
Save America’s Treasures sites.

Exterior of Feehan Memorial Library at Mundelein Seminary.
Photo courtesy of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake/
Mundelein Seminary.

Feehan Memorial Library, Mundelein Seminary

1000 East Maple Avenue

Mundelein, IL

Website:  Feehan Memorial Library and McEssy Theological Resource Center

The Treasure:  The Feehan Memorial Library at Mundelein Seminary is home to a remarkable special collection of rare books and Americana.

Accessibility:  The Feehan Memorial Library is open daily.  Check the website for hours.

Cardinal George Mundelein in 1932.
Source:  Wikimedia Commons

Background:  Cardinal George Mundelein (1872-1939) had a passion for collecting. A widely respected Roman Catholic leader who served as Archbishop of Chicago from 1916 until his death in 1939, Cardinal Mundelein cherished his country and his faith.  For him, this meant a commitment to preserving records of the past. Mundelein’s collection of Americana, Presidential signatures, and autograph manuscripts of saints comprises a significant portion of the treasures of the Feehan Memorial Library at Mundelein Seminary. Other treasures can be found among the library’s rare books, many collected by John E. Rothensteiner (1860-1936), a parish priest who served in Fredericktown and St. Louis, Missouri. Combine these collections and it’s no wonder that the American Library Association named the Feehan Memorial Library one of the 250 World’s Greatest Libraries in 2010.

Nearly 75 years after his death, much of the campus of the University of Saint Mary of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary still bears the stamp of Cardinal Mundelein.  Feeling that Chicago needed a seminary for the formation of priests, Mundelein revived St. Mary’s College, which existed here from 1844 until 1866. Renamed the University of Saint Mary on the Lake, Mundelein’s new seminary opened in 1921.

The ceiling of the Feehan Memorial Library.
Photo courtesy of the University of Saint Mary
of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary.

A great school needs a great library and Mundelein had a vision for it, as well.  He had the architects base the interior of the Feehan Memorial Library on the 16th century Barberini Palace in Italy where Mundelein had completed his seminary training. Mundelein had his coat of arms incorporated into the tables and ceiling beams, with representations of bees (a symbol of the Barberini family) and the Virgin Mary.  He named the building the Feehan Memorial Library in remembrance of Chicago’s Archbishop Patrick Augustus Feehan (1829-1902).

Of course, the library is primarily focused upon books that serve for the education of priests—thousands of books on theology, scripture studies, and church history.  But the special collections are an unexpected surprise, full of treasures you might not expect to stumble across in this environment.  Here you find a land survey by George Washington, a collection of first-edition Charles Dickens books, a signed edition of Napoleon’s memoirs, a 15th century illuminated “Book of Hours,” a 1515 edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the first Bible printed in Gaelic, and major sets of autographs of American presidents and Catholic saints personally collected by Cardinal Mundelein.

Interior of the Feehan Memorial Library.
Photo courtesy of the University of Saint Mary
of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary.

Other Recommended Sites:  Mundelein Seminary is located in Lake County, Illinois, which forms the tip of the northeastern corner of the state. The Lake County Discovery Museum in Wauconda, Illinois interprets the history and culture of the county.  Here you can find the Curt Teich Postcard Archives, the largest public collection of postcards (365,000!) in the country.

Overhead image of the Feehan Memorial Library.
Photo courtesy of the University of Saint Mary
of the Lake/Mundelein Seminary.

Tour America's History Itinerary

Coming next:  A tour of Pennsylvania’s Save America’s Treasures sites.

© 2013 Lee Price

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

View Jane Addams Hull-House Museum in a larger map

Visit our Tour Destination: Illinois page to see the entire tour of the state’s
Save America’s Treasures sites.

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.
Photo courtesy of Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.

Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

The University of Illinois at Chicago

800 S. Halsted

Chicago, IL

Website:  Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

The Treasure:  Hull-House was America’s most famous settlement house—a place where the ideals of the Progressive Era were put into practice, improving the lives of thousands.

Accessibility:  The museum is open Tuesday through Fridays from 10 to 4 and Sunday from noon to 4.  It’s closed Mondays and Saturdays.

Jane Addams.
Image from Hull-House
Yearbooks, courtesy of
University of Illinois at
Chicago Library.

Background:  Jane Addams took the ideals of the Progressive Era and put them into practice.  Hull-House, a settlement house co-founded by Addams and Ellen Gates Starr in 1889, was her incubator.  Through a wide array of programs and activities, Addams and Starr endeavored to improve the lives of the residents of some of Chicago’s poorest neighborhoods.  They fought for better urban living conditions, while creating a safe environment where disadvantaged people could benefit from the free offering of arts, culture, and education.

A reformist social movement that began in London in the middle of the 19th century, the settlement movement sought to bring the upper class and the lower class together in environments of mutual respect.  Largely driven by the idealistic concerns of upper-middle-class and upper-class women, the settlement movement was extremely flexible, ready to engage in social work, cultural and art activities, recreational programs, and education.  Hull-House was not the first American settlement house, but thanks to the drive of Addams and Starr it quickly became a beacon of the movement in the United States.

Known as “residents,” the volunteers who worked at Hull-House offered a buzzing environment of classes, concerts, lectures, theater, and training programs.  They served a local community that was a complex maze of small ethnic neighborhoods.  Initially, they primarily worked with Italians, Irish, Germans, Greeks, Bohemians, and Russian and Polish Jewish immigrants.  As immigration and migration patterns began to change the makeup of the neighborhoods, Hull-House reached out to Mexican-American and African-American families, as well.  It was always the working poor that were the focus of Hull-House—the people who worked long hours as unskilled laborers at the garment industry sweatshops and the factories along the Chicago River.

At the Front Door of Hull House.
Historic photo from Hull-House Yearbooks, courtesy of
University of Illinois at Chicago Library.

In the city’s poorest sections, sanitation was poor, wages were low, and young children were recruited for some of the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs.  Hull-House was on the forefront of advocating for improved government services and tougher industry regulations.  Hull-House offered an oasis where families could imagine a better future.  Jane Addams wrote, “To feed the mind of the worker, to lift it above the monotony of his task and connect it with the larger world, outside of his immediate surroundings, has always been the object of art.”  Following her vision, Addams organized and promoted art classes and training programs to unleash creativity and tap latent talents.

Today, the Jane B. Addams Hull-House Museum is an historic site that tells the story of America’s most famous settlement house.  Exhibits explore the lives of neighborhood children, the commitment of the residents who worked at Hull-House, artwork by Chicago artists who trained and taught at Hull-House, historical photographs of the neighborhood, and the restored bedroom of Jane Addams, where you can see her 1931 Nobel Peace Prize, the first ever given to an American woman.

But the real story of Hull-House lies in the thousands of changed and transformed lives that passed through it.  One exhibit explores two of those lives:  Hilda Satt Polachek and Jesús Torres.  Born in Poland, Polachek immigrated to the United States and Chicago when just a little girl.  At the age of 18, she began attending courses at Hull-House and discovered a talent for writing.  Her memoir of her time at Hull-House, I Came a Stranger:  The Story of a Hull-House Girl, was published posthumously in 1989 and is one of the best windows into life inside a settlement house.  A Mexican migrant, Jesús Torres learned ceramics at the Hull-House Kilns, receiving instruction from Russian immigrant artist Morris Topchevksy in the 1930s.  Thanks to his Hull-House training, Torres became a successful and widely admired ceramic artist, doing much work with Chicago’s Carl Street Studios.

The oldest known photograph of Hull-House.
Photo courtesy of Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.

Hull-House at it looked in the 1920s.
Photo courtesy of Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.

A children's art class at Hull-House.
Image from Hull-House Yearbooks.  These images were
preserved through a 1999 Save America's Treasures grant.
Through this grant, master negatives, use negatives, and
use prints were produced for an estimated 5,000
photographs and 1,500 yearbook images from the
collection of the University of Illinois at Chicago Library.
Image courtesy of the University of Illinois at Chicago Library.

Other Recommended Sites:  Many Mexicans came north in the 1920s, looking for work at the Chicago factories.  They settled into neighborhoods, bringing a vibrant culture and traditions with them.  Fittingly, Chicago is now home to the National Museum of Mexican Art located in Pilsen on the Lower West Side.  The museum showcases the beauty and richness of Mexican culture which has flourished not just in the country of Mexico but throughout the Americas.

A painting of Hull-House that served as a basis for the 1960s restoration.
Image courtesy of Jane Addams Hull-House Museum.

Tour America's History Itinerary

Thursday’s destination:  Feehan Library, Mundelein Seminary

© 2013 Lee Price

Unity Temple

View Unity Temple in a larger map

Visit our Tour Destination: Illinois page to see the entire tour of the state’s
Save America’s Treasures sites.

Interior of Unity Temple.
© Lisa Kelly and Unity Temple Restoration Foundation.

Unity Temple

875 Lake Street

Oak Park, IL

Website:  Unity Temple Restoration Foundation

The Treasure:   Unity Temple was the first of Frank Lloyd Wright’s major public building commissions and he seized the opportunity to create a masterpiece.

Accessibility:  Unity Temple is open for self-guided tours and pre-arranged group tours Monday through Friday from 10:30 to 4:30, on Saturdays from 10 to 2, and on Sundays from 1 to 4.  There is a modest admission fee.

Or… since Unity Temple is the home of an active Unitarian Universalist Congregation, consider experiencing Unity Temple at a Sunday morning worship service at either 9 or 10:45 a.m.

Unity Temple exterior.
© Lisa Kelly and Unity Temple
Restoration Foundation.

Background:  Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple was a game changer.  Completed in 1908 and dedicated by its congregation on September 26, 1909, Unity Temple took the brilliant and innovative ideas that Wright had been lavishing on residential houses for over a decade and integrated them into a sublime public space.  Looking back, Wright later said, “That was my first expression of this eternal idea which is at the center and core of all true modern architecture.  A sense of space, a new sense of space.”  Our built world looks different today because of this building.

For the first time, the relatively new building material of reinforced concrete was celebrated as a bold artistic medium.  Wright made no attempt to hide the concrete under 19th century embellishments;  he ushered in 20th century modern architecture by leaving the concrete exposed and then demonstrating how beautiful it could look, both graceful and austere, with light streaming in.  As Paul Goldberger, chief cultural correspondent of the New York Times, wrote in 1996, “In the temple’s great sanctuary, at once monumental and intimate, all of Wright’s ideas about space and spirituality gain their first mature expression.”

Closeup of the deteriorated
concrete.  Photo courtesy of Unity
Temple Restoration Foundation.

But reinforced concrete posed challenges that were not fully understood in the early years of the 20th century.  As Unity Temple turned 100 in 2008, its preservation needs reached a critical point.  A large section of concrete and plaster broke off the ceiling after several days of rain that September.  A major restoration effort was launched to save the building.

Scaffolding on the east side exterior of Unity Temple
during restoration of the south roof slab.
Photo courtesy of Unity Temple Restoration Foundation.

Reinstalling Frank Lloyd Wright's beautiful art glass
clerestory windows under the south slab.
Photo courtesy of Unity Temple Restoration Foundation.

With funding from Save America’s Treasures, state funds, corporate donations, a generous donation from Unity Temple Unitarian Universalist Congregation, and hundreds of individual supporters, the Unity Temple Restoration Foundation took up the challenge to lead a long-term plan to restore Unity Temple both by shoring up the original structure and by complementing it with new systems, such as a state-of-the-art roof drainage system and galvanic anodes to prolong the life of the reinforced concrete.

Because of the extreme deterioration of the concrete and reinforcing steel on Unity Temple’s south roof slab, an enormous section of ceiling had to be nearly entirely rebuilt.  During this process, a rusted horseshoe was discovered embedded in the concrete, lying open side up for good luck.  The workers replaced it with a shiny new horseshoe, now part of the new ceiling at Unity Temple.

Horseshoe found in the south slab concrete,
apparently tucked in when the concrete was
poured in 1908.  Photo courtesy of
Unity Temple Restoration Foundation.

A view of the underside of the south roof slab which was repaired and
replaced with funding from Save America's Treasures.
© Lisa Kelly and Unity Temple Restoration Foundation.

Other Recommended Sites:  Tour America’s Treasures previously visited the Frederick C. Robie House, another of Wright’s architectural masterworks in the Chicago area.  On that entry, I recommended the tour of the Frank Lloyd Wright Home and Studio, just a few blocks from Unity Temple.

While Unity Temple is the most famous of Wright’s buildings of worship, he did build some others.  Very early in his career, Wright collaborated on Unity Chapel in Spring Green, Wisconsin, helping to design the interior when he was just 21.  Much later in his career (1949-51), Wright designed the Unitarian Meeting House in Madison, Wisconsin.  The Beth Shalom Synagogue in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania is the only Wright-designed synagogue, dedicated in 1959, five months after Wright’s death.  Also completed posthumously, the Church of the Annunciation (Milwaukee, Wisconsin) was dedicated as a Greek Orthodox Church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1961.

A view of the columns on the exterior of Unity Temple.
© Lisa Kelly and Unity Temple Restoration Foundation.

Tour America's History Itinerary

Thursday’s destination:  Jane Addams Hull-House Museum

© 2013 Lee Price

Fountain of Time

View Fountain of Time in a larger map

Visit our Tour Destination: Illinois page to see the entire tour of the state’s
Save America’s Treasures sites.

The Fountain of Time by Lorado Taft on the Midway Plaisance
in Washington Park.  Photo courtesy of Chicago Park District.

Fountain of Time

Washington Park

Cottage Grove Avenue and 59th Street

Chicago, IL

Website:  Chicago Park District: Web Based Guide to Fountains, Sculptures and Monuments

Chicago Park District: Washington Park

The Treasure:   The Fountain of Time, a huge sculptural monument by Lorado Taft, was described by art historian Patrick Reynolds as “an unforgettable burst of sculpture at the west end of the Midway Plaisance.”

Accessibility:  Washington Park (where the Fountain of Time is located) is open on weekdays from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. and on weekends from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Background:   Created by Chicago’s pre-eminent sculptor, Lorado Taft (1860-1936), the Fountain of Time is an enormous work—it extends over 125 feet and its central sculptural figure towers 24 feet above the ground.  In addition to its official function as a commemoration of the centennial of the 1814 Treaty of Ghent between the U.S. and Canada, the sculptural monument functions as a meditation on the nature of time.  Inspired by a poem by Henry Austin Dobson entitled “The Paradox of Time,” it consists of 100 symbolic human figures solemnly passing a huge sculpture of Father Time.  The reflecting pool runs along the entire length of the monument, forming an integral part of Taft’s original conception.

Father Time and the reflecting pool.
© James Iska

The Fountain of Time is located on Chicago’s Midway Plaisance (which joins Washington Park and Jackson Park).  This mile-long boulevard was an important site of the famed 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition.  When that World’s Fair closed, the huge buildings were soon either torn down or lost to fire.  In the early years of the 20th century, Taft and other Chicago leaders became intent on revitalizing the Midway Plaisance.  Taft proposed two monumental sculptures, with a Fountain of Time on the west end and a complementary Fountain of Creation on the east.  Only the Fountain of Time was ever fully realized.

In order to create the very ambitious work cost-effectively, Taft seized upon the idea of using new concrete processes to cast the figures.  For the most part, this experimental approach proved very successful, saving much money while providing the appearance of carved stone.  But the extremes of Chicago weather and the porous nature of the material created long-term conservation headaches.  Over the past two decades, the Chicago Park District and the Art Institute of Chicago (administrator of the  B.F. Ferguson Fund)  have worked together to carefully conserve the monument.  In the first phase, sculpture conservator Andrzej Dajnowski  repaired and restored the fountain’s concrete figurative sculptures.

But water continued to penetrate into the severely deteriorated reflecting pool—threatening the integrity of the restored elements of the monument.  The Chicago Park District received 2003 Save America’s Treasures funding to address this problem. After fully conserving the reflecting basin, water was returned to the sculptural fountain for first time in many decades. Today, the colossal Fountain of Time monument looks much like it did when it was completed in 1922, a grand old-fashioned reminder that we are all just passers-by on the world’s stage.

Historic photo of the Fountain of Time, circa 1935.
Photo courtesy Chicago Park District Special Collections.

Other Recommended Sites:  Washington Park is on the west side of the Midway Plaisance and Jackson Park is on the east, with the University of Chicago to the north.  Lorado Taft’s Midway Studio is a National Historic Landmark owned and operated by the University of Chicago.  In Washington Park, you can find an original Frederick Law Olmsted landscape with an arboretum as well as plenty of recreational activities including a Harvest Garden.  Jackson Park borders Lake Michigan and is home to another Save America’s Treasures site, the Museum of Science and Industry.

Detail of the Fountain of Time on the Midway Plaisance in Washington Park.
© James Iska

Tour America's History Itinerary

Wednesday’s destination:  Unity Temple

© 2013 Lee Price

Columbus Park

View Columbus Park in a larger map

Visit our Tour Destination: Illinois page to see the entire tour of the state’s
Save America’s Treasures sites.

The circle ring at Columbus Park, designed by landscape architect Jens Jensen.
© James Iska

Columbus Park

500 South Central Avenue

Chicago, IL

Website:  Chicago Park District – Columbus Park

Columbus Park:  The Prairie Idealized

The Treasure:  Celebrated landscape architect Jens Jensen considered this 135-acre park to be his finest achievement.

Accessibility:  Columbus Park is open from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. on weekdays and 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. on weekends.

Background:  “You cannot put a French garden or an English garden or a German or an Italian garden in America and have it express America…  Nor can you transpose a Florida or Iowa garden to California and have it feel true, or a New England garden to Maine.  Each type of landscape must have its own individual expression.”

                                                Jens Jensen (1860-1951)

                                                Quoted in the Saturday Evening Post,

March 8, 1930

The children's shelter in the playground area
at Columbus Park.  © James Iska

One of only a few urban parks listed in its entirety as a National Historic Landmark, Columbus Park is Jens Jensen’s iconic Chicago park.  Nearly all the groundbreaking ideas that Jensen pioneered were integrated into the landscape design that Jensen realized in this park on the western side of the city.  In Columbus Park, he incorporated native plants, molded existing features of the landscape to heighten their effects, celebrated American ideals of democracy and community, and provided opportunities for recreation, relaxation, and even spirituality for city dwellers.  Jensen had a larger canvas to work with than usual (144 acres in its original conception) and he took full advantage of the opportunities presented.

Originally farmland, the property was acquired by Chicago’s West Park Commission with the intention of creating a major park to serve Chicago’s fast-growing west side.  Jensen was the biggest name in the region when it came to landscape architecture, having served as West Park Commission General Superintendent and Chief Landscape Architect and then moved on to acclaimed work in private practice.  He was a man ahead of his time, with a very distinctive vision of the future of American landscape architecture.

The creation of Columbus Park was a five-year project running from 1915 through 1920.  In designing the park, Jensen carefully studied the existing landscape to build upon its natural attributes.  He placed a nine-hole golf course and other athletic fields within a relatively flat expanse that was to recall the native prairies.  Along the outskirts, he planted small groves of native trees and vegetation.  Inspired by traces of ancient sand dunes, he introduced an artificial prairie river, two attractive waterfalls, and two brooks.  Jensen incorporated a children’s playground area, a wading pool, an outdoor theater, and one of his most distinctive elements—a council ring where local folk could gather for talk and entertainment.

The council ring before restoration.
Photo courtesy of
Chicago Park District

By its nature, landscape architecture is difficult to preserve.  This has been particularly true for Columbus Park which was significantly changed by the construction of the Eisenhower Expressway in the 1950s which lopped off some southern acreage and led to rearrangement of the athletic facilities.  The 2002 Save America’s Treasures grant offered a rallying point for renewal, meshing nicely with other city and neighborhood initiatives.  Save America’s Treasures work focused upon the restoration of the historic children’s playground area, the brooks and the paths around them, and the council ring.

The council ring after restoration.  © James Iska

Historic photo of the wading pool at Columbus Park.
Photo courtesy of  Chicago Park District Special Collections.

Notes from the Editor:  With nearly 100 blog entries to date, this is the first time that Tour America’s History has focused on the same artist twice.  Find more information on Jens Jensen in our entry on Jens Jensen Park in Highland Park, Illinois.

Other Recommended Sites:  Pay further Other examples of Jens Jensen’s landscape design can be appreciated at the Chicago Park District’s Humboldt Park, Garfield Park, and Douglas Park, as well as Lincoln Memorial Garden in Springfield, Illinois.

Pay further respect to the visionary genius of Jens Jensen by visiting Forest Preserve District of Cook County and the Indiana Dunes State Park and National Lakeshore.  A deeply committed conservationist, Jensen was a potent force in organizing for the preservation of natural landscapes like these in the early years of the conservation movement.

Historic photo of one of the waterfalls at Columbus Park.
Photo courtesy of Chicago Park District Special Collections.

Tour America's History Itinerary

Monday’s destination:  Fountain of Time

© 2013 Lee Price