History Commons^™

Scandinavia And The Prairie School: Chicago Landscape Artist Jens Jensen, J. R. Christianson

The Bridge

The "prairie" was a powerful symbol in Chicago around the tum of the present century. Louis Sullivan, Frank Lloyd Wright and others used it to characterize a new type of architecture with strong horizontal lines and free flowing interior spaces. Poets like Vachel Lindsay and Carl Sandburg sang the glories of a new breed of prairie man and woman, growing like Abraham Lincoln out of the environment of the American heartland. Among landscape artists, Jens Jensen was the leading figure of the Prairie School. He designed "prairie parks" for the city of Chicago, and landscapes appropriate to the new "prairie …