From the road, the broad, grassy green lawn of the Laurance Armour estate in Lake Forest looks barren compared with adjacent properties filled with tall trees and big bushes. You can thank Mr. T for that.
The actor outraged his neighbors and made newspaper headlines by cutting down many trees on the 8.5-acre lot.
The estate made the news again recently when it was sold to new owners who plan to restore the grounds to the style that landscape architect Jens Jensen envisioned it.
That’s good news for preservationists. Less than 10 percent of the more than 350 Midwestern private gardens Jensen designed in the early part of the 20th Century are intact, according to Scott Mehaffey, a landscape architect for the Morton Arboretum who has studied Jensen’s work. After decades of the loss of Jensen’s work, a growing number of homeowners are restoring their Jensen-designed gardens, even those that are subdivided.
Jensen’s legacy in metropolitan Chicago, however, is particularly fragile.
“He believed in saving open land long before it was popular,” says Arthur Miller, a Lake Forest College librarian and co-author of “Classic Country Estates of Lake Forest” (W.W. Norton Co.). “He had the idea for the Lake County Forest Preserve back before World War I, which wasn’t realized until the 1950s.”
Jensen was born in 1860 in Denmark and studied agriculture like his father, a farmer. When his parents objected to his girlfriend, Marie Hansen, the two eloped to the U.S. in 1884, according to landscape architect Nick Patera, who is restoring the Armour landscape. The couple worked on Florida farms for two years before moving to Chicago, where Jensen took a job as a sweeper for the park system. Two years later, he redesigned part of Chicago’s Union Park, creating groupings of wild flowers in what he called “an American Garden.” His design caused a sensation, and he soon became superintendent of Union Park, Patera said.
In 1900, the charismatic, outspoken architect was fired by the city for refusing to go along with graft, so Jensen set up a private landscape-design practice, according to Patera. He attracted big-name families such as the Armours, the McCormicks and the Florsheims as clients and designed gardens for North Shore mansions. In 1908, Jensen created a home on the North Shore for himself, which he called the Clearing. The designer stayed in Highland Park until 1935, when he moved to Wisconsin and founded a school, which he also called the Clearing, according to Miller.
The Clearing, in Ellison Bay, Wis., remains intact, a popular destination for visitors to Door County. But Highland Park’s Clearing was subdivided in 1964 after Jensen’s son-in-law, Marshall Johnson, died, according to Miller, the Lake Forest author.
Mehaffey is restoring a major portion of an estate in Riverside that Jensen completed in 1917 for the Coonley family. Mehaffey’s clients, Ellamae and Dean Eastman, also have rehabbed their half of the 1906 Frank Lloyd Wright-designed house on the property. (The house was divided in the 1950s.)
So far, the Eastmans have restored two massive concrete urns and a grape arbor to their 1920s glory. A large reflecting pool, which previous owners had converted into a swimming pool, now echoes vintage photos taken during the Coonley estate’s heyday, Mehaffey said. The pool’s water, dyed black as Jensen intended, reflects the house and sky and teems with koi and waterlilies. The driveway is again gravel, and orange tile has replaced the concrete sidewalk, according to Mehaffey.
Mehaffey hasn’t been able to exactly restore the gardens, because the original estate was subdivided and 90-year-old trees now cast a shadow over a once-sunny garden. “Still, the Coonley House and its setting, once fully restored, promise to provide one of the best examples of a Wright/Jensen collaboration and will hopefully suggest the ambience of the original space,” Mehaffey said.
Not all Jensen designs are being restored. The Harry Clow estate in Lake Bluff is on the market for $25 million. Here a quarter-mile, private asphalt road splinters off a public street, then twists and turns through a historic 22-acre estate known as Lansdowne. The thoroughfare crosses two limestone bridges and meanders past a polo field where Gen. George Patton once played, according to Miller. It ends beneath a dramatic porte-cochere for a residence overlooking Lake Michigan.
“Jensen designed the road to slow the heart rate of his clients, who were coming from Chicago,” Miller said. “You can actually feel something physical happen to you as you leave the street and enter the estate. It’s cleansing, almost spiritual.”
The 14,500-square-foot Georgian revival home was designed by architect Benjamin Marshall in 1911 for Rand McNally executive Harry Clow. Because neither the mansion nor the grounds are designated historic landmarks, the dwelling could be demolished and the polo field and surrounding land subdivided.
“The landscape is one of the best preserved Jens Jensen designs on the North Shore,” Miller said. “If it were lost, it would be a great shame.”
Also on the market, for $14 million, is Thorndale Manor, which was originally owned by Darius Miller, president of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad. Architect Howard Van Doren Shaw designed the 25-room house in 1916; Jensen did the grounds. While the 20-acre property could be subdivided, all the key Jensen elements — a pond, oak savannah, gardens and pergola — could remain intact “because they surround the residence,” said listing agent Marina Carney Vernon of Proximity3 Partners at Griffith, Grant & Lackie in Lake Forest.
The Lou B. Jackson estate in Lake Forest is also on the market for $14 million. Jensen designed its grounds, which were partially restored for a charity event, Vernon said. But, that 7-acre parcel could also be subdivided.
However, chances are good that when the Laurance Armour estate is restored it will look more authentic than the adjacent Edward Hasler estate, also designed by Jensen but virtually left untouched since the 1920s, said Miller, the author and librarian. “Some things have died since Jensen designed the place,” Miller explained. “If you’re going to restore it, you have to cut down stuff.”
Patera agrees. “Even the best gardens in Lake Forest go through an evolution; nature takes its course,” he said. “The Hasler estate has lost a lot of its form.”
The Armour family owned the house until the 1980s. They sold it to another owner, who subsequently sold to Mr. T. He deeded the land to girlfriend Phyllis Clark in 1993. She sold the property to Christine and Robert Shaw. Now the new owners, developers Rocco DeFlippis and Bruce Grieve of Legacy Preservation Partners LLC, plan to restore the property. Architects Mike Breseman and Nick Patera will oversee the restoration.
“We’re putting back the thinking that went into [creating the estate] and bringing it up to date,” Patera said.
