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Landscape designers based in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Planting and landscape plans, elevation drawings, and various other sketches for projects designed as students at the University of Michigan and subsequently for clients in Ann Arbor, Michigan and other residences in southeastern Michigan; files relating to Jessie Bourquin's work with the Michigan Department of Economic Expansion and Alice Bourquin's work with the Michigan Department of Transportation; also papers relating to joint projects and activities, including their association with Jens Jensen and their Hillwood subdivision in Ann Arbor; and photographs.

The Bourquin collection consists of landscape architectural drawings, professional papers, and visual materials documenting the careers of Alice and Jessie Bourquin. The collection has been divided into the following series: Landscape Architectural Drawings; Jessie Bourquin Papers; Alice Bourquin Papers; Joint Projects and Activities; Hillwood Subdivision; and Photographs and other Visual Materials.

Ann Arbor, Michigan, Landscape architect, speaker and lobbyist on behalf of conservation and beautification, president of the Michigan Parks Association, and member of the Citizens' Advisory Committee on Recreation and Natural Beauty during the Johnson Administration. Correspondence, reports, oral history interviews, and other materials concerning her interest in state and national conservation legislation; and photographs.

The Genevieve Gillette collection documents Gillette's concern for the development of Michigan's parks and outdoor recreation opportunities, and her work to promote scenic roads in Michigan and nationwide.

Among the issues most fully documented are the fight to establish and develop Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore, acquisition and development of Sylvania Recreation Area and McCormick Experimental Forest, threats to wilderness in the Porcupine Mountains State Park, the controversy over the proposed Mill Creek Metropark, the financing of Michigan's state park system, especially the 1968 campaign to approve recreation bonds, and the development of the Rouge River floodplain near the University of Michigan--Dearborn.

The work of the Citizens' Advisory Committee on Recreation & Natural Beauty (1966-1968), the Michigan Parks Association (1959-1975), and the Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission and predecessor organizations (1960-1974) are also documented.

The collection includes very little documentation of Gillette's professional work as a landscape architect, and includes almost nothing relating to her parks and recreation work before the late 1950s.

The collection is divided into three major series--Personal, Correspondence, and Topical file--and two small series--Photographs, Audio tape cassettes.

One of America's most visionary prairie school landscape architects, Jensen's design work incorporated horizontal lines in landforms and stonework, the natural branching habits of plants, and the restoration and conservation of native plant materials. The collection is comprised mainly of landscape architectural drawings for more than four hundred and sixty projects, along with a small amount of manuscript material and photographs.

Jensen's landscape work encompassed a broad range of projects -- residential, subdivisions, parks and preserves, schools and educational facilities, hospitals, office complexes and government centers, all of which are represented in the collection. Jensen's view of landscape architecture as a social force for integrating art, home, and commerce is a significant and unique characteristic of his work. While the native landscape itself, both as he experienced it in Denmark and in America, was his primary inspiration, Jensen was also influenced by the social and economic reform movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. His theories related to urban planning, his recognition of the restorative value of nature and wilderness, his genuine concern for the environment, and his love of people are reflected in the material and will interest researchers from a range of disciplines and subject areas -- although the documentation is almost wholly visual.

When looked upon as a whole, the collection richly illustrates Jensen's consistent philosophy of design. While each project had its own character reflecting the nature of the site and client requirements, certain recurring design features in the drawings are evidence of Jensen's particular style. His plans almost always show plants in masses -- creating unity through repetition of similar species, textures, and forms and suggesting groupings found in native habitats. The hawthorn, with its low, horizontal branching habit, a symbol of the prairie for Jensen, is found often in his designs, along with other small native trees, sometimes scattered individually, but more often in repetition to reinforce prairie views and provide a transition to larger trees along woodland borders. Also evident is the adept handling of open spaces found at the core of most of his designs -- great meadows, linear "long views," prairie views and prairie vistas, sun openings, garden rooms, clearings. Smaller clearings and sun openings emphasize the importance Jensen placed on light and shadow as integral to the art of landscaping; a series of broad curving drives, footpaths, and trails invite movement and ensure that visitors experience sequences of sun and shade, sometimes leading "to the setting sun" or "to the rising sun." Water is another distinctive feature -- quiet pools, prairie rivers, lagoons, ponds, streams enhanced with rock work skillfully executed to suggest ravines and bluffs. The drawings also provide many examples of Jensen's council rings tucked into edges of woodland borders, surrounded by trees or placed to view a meadow or lake; player's greens created for outdoor drama; and small areas set aside and screened with walls, trellises, or shrubbery for vegetable and "picking" gardens.