A MEMOIR BY

WILLIAM LE BARON JENNEY

“A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS”

January 7, 2007

A Meeting of The Chicago Literary Club at The Cliff Dwellers

Good evening, I am here, tonight on behalf of William Le Baron Jenney.

I appreciate being called “Major Jenney”, as I was brevetted to that rank by “Uncle Billy” Sherman – General William Tecumseh Sherman – for meritorious service to the Union Cause in The War of the Rebellion – to you, The Civil War. My friends call me “Bill” or “Billy”. As I was a member of our Chicago Literary Club, you are among my friends. Please, notwithstanding the fact that each of you is so much younger than I, for you, I am “Bill”.

I was a member of our Club from 1878 into 1896, when I resigned, as my wife’s health was failing. One of my sons, Frank, was a member from 1911 until his death in 1949. I delivered three papers at meetings of our Club:

The Fossils of History (1883);

Personal Reminiscences of Vicksburg (1885); and

An Age of Steel (1890).

None of those papers are in the archives of our Club at The Newberry Library. Some of the points that I made in those papers are in articles published in the INLAND ARCHITECT and in the American Architect and Building News. I have assembled a list of most of what I have written for publication, and I have asked John Notz to see that any of you who may wish a copy gets one.

(Copyright, John K. Notz, Jr. - 2008)

Ted Turak, once of American University, has been my only biographer. His book, published by the UMI Press, is available on print order. It is a much modified version of Turak’s doctoral dissertation at The University of Michigan; a friend of John Notz, Leonard Eaton, was Chair of Turak’s dissertation review committee. This biography was published in 1986 and received but one review – that being in the academic press – the Journal of The Society of Architectural Historians. The reviewer was Bob Twombly, a great fan of Louis Sullivan – meaning that Twombly’s review was biased, unfairly, I think, against what Turak’s book had to say of me. Turak’s book deserved better treatment than Twombly gave it. I have used Turak’s book, in my preparation of this “paper”, as it provides context for my formative and professional years that I, myself, was not able to recognize.

I wrote, often, not only for publication to the construction trade, but, also, for publication in the Chicago newspapers, on a wide variety of subjects, mostly, describing my ideas for better construction techniques and materials, in language intended for the lay reader.

Late in life, I wrote what I called an Autobiography, of which you can find a microfilmed copy in the archives of The Ryerson & Burnham Libraries of The Art Institute of Chicago. The original of that Autobiography is in the custody of my namesake great grandson, who lives in Bisbee, AZ. I expect that he, William Le Baron Jenney, III, will see that it gets to his namesake son, who lives in Flagstaff, AZ. The latter has a namesake son, William Le Baron Jenney, V, as well; he is a student at The University of Arizona, where several of my descendants have obtained degrees in civil engineering, in order to pursue careers as mining engineers.

As my Autobiography covered little more than stories of my military services in The War of the Rebellion, it has been criticized. Yes; therein, I could have written more of my life, but I was far more interested in matters other than writing about myself.

Since I died in June, 1907, I was never a member of The Cliff Dwellers, but I enjoyed telling and listening to good stories; so, I must have known Hamlin Garland, whose portrait is over the fireplace, and I knew Charles Hutchinson, whose portrait is over there, around the corner, in connection with Bill Mundie’s and my design of The World’s Columbian Exposition’s Horticultural Building. I would have liked Hutchinson to have used my firm, as architect for any of the several important Chicago and Geneva Lake properties for which he was the “Owner’s Representative”, but he preferred to use professionals younger than I - much closer to his own age - such as Charles Coolidge, of H. H. Richardson’s old firm, and Robert Spencer, who had obtained some of his training, as an architect, therein. Hutchinson was attracted to “University Gothic” – the English Gothic Revival style of architecture - and I preferred that of the French.

However, I did design residences and other structures for several of Mr. Hutchinson’s Prairie Avenue area and Geneva Lake friends, such as Levi Leiter, who was my best client, over the years, for several Chicago high rise buildings, in addition to his First and Second Leiter Buildings and his Geneva Lake, WI, home.

My only other connection with Mr. Hutchinson is the fact that, in 1902, he bought his own Geneva Lake property from the Estate of Arthur Ducat, who had been important to my own professional career. I will relate more of some of my dealings with General Ducat, hereinafter.

Since my Autobiography covered so little of my life, my “paper”, this evening – my fourth for our Club - is my effort to summarize my life for you. Since I cannot, physically, be with you, I have asked John Notz to read my “paper” to you, for me.

* * *

I was born in 1832 - a product of an old New England family – one that put its roots down in the New World in Plymouth, Massachusetts, in 1623 – arriving not on the “Mayflower”, but three years later, on the “Little James”. Until The War of the Rebellion, my father was a successful owner of whaling ships sailing out of Fairhaven, Massachusetts, the clone of New Bedford that had been created by the differing local views with respect to whether one would align oneself, during The War of 1812, with the English or with the Americans. My family aligned themselves with the Americans. After The War of the Rebellion, my father was put out of business by the use, for household lighting, of petroleum products, into much reduced living circumstances. However, before that War, when some 80% of the whaling ships in operation were American, my father had been in a position to see that I had, for his time and mine, a first rate education.

At age ten, I was sent to a “scientific and military academy” in Unity, New Hampshire, near Hanover, and, then, to another “academy” in Marlboro, New Hampshire. Starting when I was 13, going on 14, in the late 1840’s, I had several years at Phillips Academy, in Andover, Massachusetts, which, in the 100 years since I was there, has attained a considerable reputation. Phillips Academy, even then, had noteworthy architecture, including an 1819 building designed by Charles Bulfinch. Scholastically, Phillips Academy at Andover had a “Classical Department” and an “English Department”; the latter included the sciences and business and commercial studies intended for those of us who were headed for business careers, which is what my father wished for me. Among the sciences in the “English Department” were six courses in Mathematics, land surveying and civil engineering, in all of which I did well.

In 1849, when I was 17, with my father’s encouragement, I took to the sea, from Fairhaven, just as Herman Melville appears to have done under far harsher circumstances, on a ship that “went around the Horn”, touching in Valparaiso, Chile, and going on to San Francisco, California, where I arrived in February, 1850, at age 18, in time to see San Francisco burn away, in its great fire of May, 1850, which has been supplanted in the memory of San Franciscans by the fires created by The Great Earthquake of 1906. As a result, I had a major experience with a serious urban fire, long before The Chicago Fires of 1871 and 1873.

I left San Francisco in June, 1850, on a ship out originating out of Providence, Rhode Island, that, having taken only eleven days for the trip, stopped in the Sandwich Islands, at Honolulu. After a week there, I went on to the Philippines for three months, experiencing a typhoon there and, incidentally, learning of the resiliency and strength of the bamboo post and beam structures. From the Philippines, I went to Java – in today’s Indonesia. I returned to New York City in January, 1851, at age 19. Of course, I had absorbed all that I could of the cultures through which I had passed – cultures that bore no resemblance to my New England – even the sophisticated communities of Fairhaven/New Bedford, whose sailing men had traveled the world far longer and far more broadly than I had.

During my months abroad, reflecting on what I had learned in my travels, and realizing the likely needs of the growing railroad industry, I decided to obtain schooling that would permit me to become a civil engineer. (There was no school in the United States from which one could obtain the training necessary to be an architect.) Few options for training for such a career, were open to me –

Going into the Engineering Department of The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York, under the famous Dennis Hart Mahan, its Professor of Engineering, which Bill Holabird, later, did; as described by Marvin Anderson in the June, 2008, issue of the Journal of The Society of Architectural Historians (an article titled The Architectural Education of Nineteenth Century American Engineers: Dennis Hart Mahan at West Point, the Academy had been modeled upon Louis Napoleon’s L’Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France, which, then, had the best available training, in the world, for civil engineers; or

Apprenticing myself to a recognized professional civil engineer, of which there were few; or

Going to any of The University of Michigan, which had initiated an Engineering Department only ten years before, in 1841; or The Renssellaer Institute of Engineering at Union College in Schenectady, New York, founded only five years before, in 1846; or The Lawrence Scientific School of Harvard University, in near-by Cambridge, also founded in 1846.

In 1852, I chose the last. My choice was a mistake. While Abbott Lawrence, with two $50,000 gifts to the University, had endowed an engineering school, Harvard had appointed but one man to teach the subject – Henry Eustis, a graduate of West Point, only two years before I appeared before him. Professor Eustis had appropriate credentials, but he did not have the charisma of Louis Agassiz, the Zoologist who acquired a world reputation while at Harvard, and Harvard diverted as much as it could of the income from the Lawrence Endowed Funds to Agassiz. I had no interest in converting myself to Agassiz’ Zoölogy. Besides, from Harvard, one could get only a Bachelor of Science degree, and I wanted more. After one year at Harvard, I chose to leave. (In time, under the pressure of competition from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in 1906, Harvard abandoned its modest engineering program and diverted Lawrence’s endowed funds to academic offerings other than engineering; however, in recent years, Harvard President Larry Summers deemed “engineering” to be a “priority of transcendent importance”, and Harvard, as of September, 2007, has a new School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.)

I had not considered going to Germany, as the training in the sciences that caused Germany to be a Mecca for scientific education was not to be available until twenty years after I was making my decision to go to France - after Bismarck had outwitted the French military in 1870.

I had considered going to England, as England was, then, the industrial giant of the world; its technical education was empirical and pragmatic; and its civil engineers enjoyed financial success and high social status; however, by the time that I had decided to leave Harvard, many sophisticated English engineers had begun to advocate the type of engineering education that had been developing in France.

I had not considered going to L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, in Paris, as I was not likely to be admitted. (afterwards, I found that, before me, Richard Morris Hunt had failed, in his first effort for admission, and, after me, Henry Hobson Richardson had, so, failed, as well. In any event, I wished a less “creative” training – a less theoretical training – than provided at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts.

L’Ecole Polytechnique, in Paris, founded in 1793 – almost sixty years before my decision-making - had developed into a training institution for the French Army and the French Government. Few foreigners were permitted to enter. Its standards for admission were so high that I believed that I would not be accepted. In fact, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, who was but one year ahead of me at L’Ecole Centrale des Arts et Manufactures, and who, later, made his considerable name, with his Eiffel Tower, an iron structure constructed for the Paris Exposition of 1889, a few years after the construction of my Home Insurance Building, had failed his examination at L’Ecole Polytechnique.

L’Ecole Centrale, in Paris, had been founded in 1829 – some twenty years before my decision-making, with its goal: the creation of a new industrial France. The progressive attitude of its faculty appeared to me to be that of the English Department of Phillips Academy. By 1851, the graduates of L’Ecole Centrale were employed throughout all of Europe, mostly by the railroads. It had, even, been praised by the Executive Secretary of England’s 1851 Exhibition.

In June, 1853, supporting my decision to go to L’Ecole Centrale, Professor Eustis wrote a letter for me, describing my deportment, industry and attention, while I had been one of his students, as “perfectly satisfactory” – a recommendation that was adequate for my purposes. To enter L’Ecole Centrale, I had, only, to show that I had enough command of French to be able to follow the courses and pass the examinations. Somehow, over the years, I had picked up enough French, to apply. I was admitted, I am sure, only on my ability with numbers, as my grades on my writing and my verbal abilities – in French - were poor, but I must have interviewed well.

Louis Sullivan was mistaken, in his belief that I attended L’Ecole Polytechnique; I did not; it was L’Ecole Centrale that I attended. Perhaps, because Sullivan had no knowledge of French education in engineering, and, since he spent less than a year at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, he may not have known the difference between L’Ecole Polytechnique and L’Ecole Centrale. Today, the casual tourist to Paris hears only of L’Ecole Polytechnique and L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, but L’Ecole Centrale is more alive than is either of those other two “Grandes Ecoles”. L’Ecole Centrale includes my name, still, on its short list of its graduates who made the best professional names for themselves, as it does that of Eiffel.

On my arrival in Paris, I learned that L’Ecole Centrale was in a lively neighborhood – Le Quartier du Maurais – close to La Place des Vosges. (Its school building is, today, The Picasso Museum.) By the time of my arrival, some 600 students had attended L’Ecole Centrale. I matriculated in 1853, at age 21. I graduated in 1856, at age 24. During the year after I graduated, L’Ecole Centrale became one of Les Grandes Ecoles de France. Within ten years after my graduation, 53 Americans had matriculated there.

While L’Ecole Polytechnique graduated virtually all students who entered it, the cut rate from L’Ecole Centrale was sobering: in my own class, 176 started; only 106 survived the first year; only 86 survived the second year; only 66 graduated; of that 66, only 38 received the coveted diplôme; the other 28 received only a certificate de capacité. I was proud to have received a diplôme.

My three years of courses were very difficult. I received few disciplinary reprimands –two for tardiness and one for an unexcused absence – evidence that I was, already, a “good soldier”. I had one major independent study project and many smaller ones – quite varied construction problems for substantial structures and in landscape planning. The schooling was rigorous, without informality – really, a military-like life. There was a vast amount of homework, including - especially useful for my future - both topographical designing required for substantial landscape planning and a wooden frame bridge.

In contrast to the atelier experiences of students at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, I was expected to “get my hands dirty” – to acquire knowledge of all details of the building process, from the heating system, to the cutting of decorative stone - considering all economic, social and functional requirements of any design. We students visited a wide variety of projects, studying them in regard to their ultimate use. There was no dreaming of projects that could not be executed.

While, by the 1850’s, iron structural shapes had been designed and proved to be feasible, iron’s high price severely limited its use. Since Henri Lambrouste’s Bibliothèque St. Geneviève of 1850 was in The Latin Quarter, near L’Ecole Polytechnique, I was able to familiarize myself with its iron structure, and I am aware that it continues to operate, today, one hundred years after my death, in the manner for which it was designed. Lambrouste’s own atelier, which had operated since the 1830’s, in his effort to counter the influence of L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, continued into 1856, while I was still in Paris, getting my formal schooling. More influential upon me, however, was the work of Viollet-le-Duc, who opened his own atelier, outside of L’Ecole des Beaux Arts in 1856. Viollet-le-Duc’s advancing of the cause of “form following function”, as the prime goal of any sound style of architecture, long preceded Louis Sullivan’s celebrated use of that phrase.

“Les Halles” – the Paris markets - had opened in 1851, just after I arrived, and I had to have noticed that, while the first of its structures were of stone, it was completed in iron – the Architect – Baltard – having been required by Louis Napoleon’s Baron Haussman to change his design, to follow the structural concepts used in the then newest of the railroad stations of France – Haussman having been brought to Paris by Louis Napoleon in 1853, the same year that I, first, arrived there. .

In 1856, I left Paris for my home in Fairhaven, but I, quickly, took a job for a company involved in the construction of a railroad across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec in Mexico, which is the shortest route in Mexico, between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. While I, rather, quickly, at my then age of 24, was placed in charge of that project, an economic depression brought it to a halt. Thereafter, that railroad was completed, but not with my involvement, as I had gone on to other things. (The completion of the construction of the Panama Canal, shortly after I died, ended any need for such a railroad.)

Then, I obtained an assignment to build a large mechanized bakery in Paris, for the French Army. I lived, well, in Paris, became friendly with James Whistler and George du Maurier, visited the offices where my Ecole Centrale classmates had secured employment, and visited art studios, where I learned drawing from life and painting. I, also, learned that I could extend my training as an engineer into becoming a landscape planner and a structural architect. Many years later, in 1894, du Maurier published his Gothic horror novel Trilby - in which all of the young men portrayed were smitten by Trilby, based on his and my years in Paris, together. Little Billie, one of those most smitten, has been said to have been modeled upon me. As du Maurier did not treat Little Billie kindly, I hope that that was not the case.

While in Paris, this time, I, first, heard of Sherman, and I returned to the United States, to meet him. I joined his Cincinnati & Marietta Rail Road, using Cincinnati as my base. In 1860, in my capacity as a Civil Engineer for that railroad, I was the delineator of a large, exceedingly detailed map of the route of the Cincinnati & Marietta Rail Road, which entered Cincinnati from the North, down the river valley in which Cincinnati’s later famed Spring Grove Cemetery was in an early stage of development by Adolph Strauch. Strauch had been consulted in the 1860’s by Thomas Barbour Bryan, with respect to Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery, but that contact was not until after The Civil War, and that contact was several years before I was asked to provide services for Graceland Cemetery. However, I was in a position to familiarize myself with what Strauch had designed for important men of Cincinnati and for Spring Grove Cemetery, especially the beautiful lakes of Spring Grove Cemetery, that had been created by Strauch from a swamp, which is a concept that I used in the late 1870’s for Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery. While in Cincinnati, I, also, had a small architectural Practice with Frederick Roelofson, and both of us lived in Cincinnati’s Burton Hotel – then, the best hotel in all of The Northwest Territory.

However, in March, 1861, Sherman told me to use his name, to get into the US Army as soon as I could, as a civil war was coming. I did, obtaining a commission as a Lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. I was, first, assigned to Cairo, Illinois, as an Engineer on the staff of then Brigadier General U. S. Grant. As my immediate superior, General Webster, was preoccupied with topographical duties, I was assigned to supervise, at the age of less than 30 years, military construction projects in the vicinity of Cairo and across the Ohio River, in Kentucky. Roelofson, too, obtained a three-year commission – but in a Michigan unit – but he resigned after but one year of service, probably due to disability from wounds or illness, and we lost track of each other.

Then, I was at Shiloh with Grant and when he captured his first Rebel Army at Fort Donelson, Kentucky. I was, still, with Grant, when he captured his second Rebel Army at Vicksburg, Mississippi. I have “dined out”, many times, on stories of the extreme difficulties of Grant’s Vicksburg Campaign. It strikes me as fitting, that my last significant design assignment, before I retired, was the State of Illinois monument on the Vicksburg Battlefield. I did not live to see it executed, although my successors - of Jenney, Mundie & Jensen –supervised its execution.

It has been said that I learned my skills in post and beam construction in bridge-building during that War; actually, I spent my War time demolishing existing bridges and, when building them, they were of the pontoon type, as the Union armies to which I was assigned were expected to move, and to move fast.

I have been asked whether it was during that War that I met Arthur Ducat – General Ducat – the man who brought me the Home Insurance Project. Ducat and I entered military service as Illinois volunteers, in Cairo, Illinois, within a month of each other. I had been commissioned, directly, as a Lieutenant in the Army Corps of Engineers. Ducat, also a civil engineer, two years older than I, had enlisted as a Private and was, within one month, a First Lieutenant of his Illinois volunteer unit. He, soon, was assigned to a unit under General Rosecrans and rose to be Rosecrans’ Chief of Staff. Following Grant’s promotion to Commanding General of the Armies of the West, I was reassigned to Sherman’s Armies, and, in the course of time, I became a Captain, his Chief Engineer, and I was brevetted by him, as a Major. Louis Sullivan was, again, mistaken, when he wrote that I was with Sherman for Sherman’s March to the Sea; I was not; once Sherman took Atlanta, I was assigned to engineering duties there. I was mentioned, several times, in dispatches that found their way into The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, and topographical maps that I, myself, prepared are in those Official Records. In short, Ducat and I were in different Union armies. I am aware that the Official Records have a Major Jenney mentioned for meritorious service in the Chickamauga Campaign, in the same paragraph as such a mention of Ducat; however, that Major Jenney was William Jenney of the Michigan Volunteers, one of my cousins. The Jenney family records used in the Annual Reunions of the Jenney Family, in Plymouth, Massachusetts, contain information about that Major Jenney, as well as about me. I do not recall meeting Ducat during our active service; however, after the War, as long as either of us lived, we were among the most active of the many officers in the activities of Union veterans’ organizations, such as The Loyal Legion of The Grand Army of the Republic and Chicago’s Union League Club. I designed the first and second clubhouses of that club; the latter was replaced in 1929 by the present clubhouse, designed by Bill Mundie and Elmer Jensen, who had taken charge of my firm in 1905.

After the end of the active hostilities, I spent a year in St. Louis, Missouri, preparing maps of campaigns of Union armies for the Atlas of the War of the Rebellion that was, much later, published; my maps of Fort Donelson, Kentucky, of the Jackson, Mississippi, Campaign and of Sherman’s March to the Sea were included therein. John Notz tells me that he saw the page of that Atlas that contains my map of Sherman’s Armies’ campaigns of 1863, ’64 and’65 (Plate CXVII) during the past Christmas week in an antique mall in San Francisco – priced, poorly framed, at $325 – if in 1865 Dollars – a very fancy price, indeed.

While in St. Louis, I was in a position to observe the impact of the efforts of the steamboat interests to prevent the construction of a bridge for the railroads, across the Mississippi River, such as the bridge that had been completed in 1856 near the Quad Cities. (Henry Rust, whom I, later, knew as “Major Rust” in Grand Army of the Republic functions in Chicago, worked on that bridge, and on others, before putting in three years of bridge-building in Union armies other than mine.) While The War of the Rebellion had interfered with the conduct of much commerce in St. Louis, the delay caused by the steamboat interests’ resistance to the creation of that sorely-needed rail crossing until 1874 - the Eads Bridge - caused Chicago’s commercial contributions to the development of the West to leave those of St. Louis far behind.

In 1866, I was 34. I had considered remaining in military service, as an Engineer, but I recognized the lack of opportunities in a peace-time army, and I was not a West Point graduate. I chose to start a career as an engineer, architect and landscape gardener. I made a brief, but unsuccessful, effort in New York to obtain employment.

While I was asked to Chair the Department of Engineering at what became Rutgers University, I remembered how isolated Professor Eustis had been at Harvard, and I concluded that my professional prospects were better in Chicago. One of the letters that I wrote, seeking employment, telling him of my career goals and asking for advice, was to Frederick Law Olmsted, as I had met him in the course of his duties as head of The Sanitary Commission – the new hospital service that served the Union Armies during The War of the Rebellion. That inquiry brought me a brief period of association in New York City with Mssrs. Olmsted, Vaux and Withers, with all of whom I would deal, during my earliest services for the Town of Riverside, Illinois.

By 1867, I was in Chicago, where I formed a brief architectural partnership with Sanford Loring. While Loring was some ten years younger than I was, but he had a small established practice in Chicago, as an architect, having started to practice there with John Van Osdel – the pioneer Chicago architect - prior to the War of the Rebellion, and he had married a daughter of Charles Volney Dyer, a noted Chicago physician, Abolitionist, operator of The Underground Railroad, early Lincoln supporter and, later, an investor in railroads – The Burlington Road. Dr. Dyer and Thomas Barbour Bryan, with whom I had a professional relationship relating to Graceland Cemetery that I will describe hereafter, must have been well-acquainted.

I also became aware of Cobb’s Library - a Chicago bookseller related to Cobb, Andrews & Co., a publishing firm based in Cleveland, Ohio, which had a Chicago affiliate operating under the name of Cobb, Pritchard & Co. As I wished to promote my Loring & Jenney firm in Chicago, I approached the Cobb firms for support. I obtained that support and, as well, a wife – Elizabeth - “Liz” – out of a branch of the Cobb family that had remained in Cleveland. Just as in-laws, historically, have aided sons-in-law, in establishing themselves in business, the Cobbs aided me – even more tangibly than by a dowry: they contributed their expertise to the publishing of the book – Principles and Practice of Architecture - that Sanford Loring and I set about creating, using what I had learned in my Ecole Centrale education. John Notz tells me that he has secured a copy for himself.

“Liz” Cobb and I married in 1867; we had a son in 1868; we had my book in early 1869, and we had another son in late 1869. My family and career in Chicago had been launched. The advertisement for my firm that is at the end of Loring’s and my book reflects that Loring and I were offering to design public and private buildings, store fittings, decorations for buildings, parks, monuments and cemeteries – a rather broad offering for a brand new partnership, of two men as young as Loring and me. 

You can sense what I was able to accomplish in my first two years in Chicago by a careful examination of the book that I wrote with Loring. This book had, largely, been written and its illustrations created and assembled by me in 1868. The titles of the chapters of our book, after our "Definitions", will give you a sense of from where we were coming:

A Review of the History of the Most Important Styles of Architecture;

Truth in Art - i.e., architecture;

Theories of Construction;

Modern French Architecture

Under the latter, I discussed both apartment houses, which, because then land values in even the largest American cities were low, had not, yet, become an acceptable mode of living for the well-to-do, and working men's cottages - "working men" meaning those men who did not, yet, have the independent means to call for a residence that had been custom-designed by a professional.

Our book featured Chicago’s then brand new Grace Episcopal Church, which was on Wabash Avenue, between 14^th and 15^th Streets. While Grace Church was outside of the destruction of The Great Chicago Fire of 1871, it was destroyed by its own fire in 1915. Also included in our book was a drawing of a Presbyterian church, which may have been used by me in 1884, for the Third Presbyterian Church, at Ashland and Ogden, to replace its church structure that had just been destroyed by fire. In addition, there were residences that, in time, were built in Riverside (including one for myself), one in Douglas Grove (which, as I recall, was a subdivision of property that had been owned by Stephen Douglas, until his death in 1861, after which it had been Camp Douglas, a prison camp for Rebel soldiers); two residences on Chicago’s Prairie Avenue, one in Winnetka, one in Hyde Park, one near Cincinnati, Ohio, several in other suburbs of Chicago, one in Athens, IL, frame row houses on Chicago’s LaSalle Street on Chicago’s North Side, and a store and offices on Chicago’s Wabash Avenue.

While our book was well-received, it did not generate the flow of business that Loring and I wished, and our partnership was dissolved. Loring chose to enter the terra cotta business, both for fireproofing and for decoration, in which he did well, because his product was quite satisfactory for the fire-proofing needed by my iron and steel structures. Loring was divorced in 1876 and left the Chicago area, but his former wife founded the long-lived Mrs. Dyer’s Academy, starting on Prairie Avenue and, much later, moving to Kenwood and, last, to Beverly.

In 1869, my first landscape planning work was contracted for by Chicago’s West Parks Commission, and I was “Engineer and Architect” for those Parks from 1869 into 1876. When Louis Schermerhorn and John Bogart joined me, for the execution of Mr. Olmsted’s Plan of Riverside, the three of us, as Jenney, Schermerhorn & Bogart, obtained a contract for much more design work for the West Parks System. Both Schermerhorn and Bogart had worked with Olmsted and Vaux on New York’s Central Park, which had opened to the general public in 1859, shortly before The War of the Rebellion started. Mr. Olmsted had brought to our partnership the execution of his Plan of the Town of Riverside; I brought to our partnership the execution of my plans for Chicago’s three big West Parks.

The Great Chicago Fire of 1871, and the depression that followed it in 1873, forced the Riverside Improvement Company into insolvency, and the Town of Riverside developed far more slowly than any of us had anticipated, and there were problems of inadequate cash flow, to pay the professionals involved, which must have been a factor in the dissolution in 1872 of the Olmsted, Vaux & Associates partnership. The withdrawal of both Olmsted and Vaux from their Riverside project meant that my partnership with Schermerhorn and Bogart had to execute the Plan, and we did, taking prime buildable lots as a part payment of our fee. Thus, I designed houses for both Schermerhorn and myself in the Town of Riverside.

The Parks Commissions for all of Chicago’s Parks, created by State Legislative actions in Springfield, suffered from high construction costs and real estate assessment collection difficulties that followed the Chicago fires of 1871 and 1873, causing significant delays in completion. During 1869-1877, the West Park Commissioners were led by George Stanford, a Republican, as I was. First, I, and then my new firm, contracted to provide planning and engineering services for the three large West Parks – Douglas (then known as “South Park”), Garfield (then known as “Central Park”) and Humboldt, and for the boulevards that connect them. In 1871, my firm completed plans for these three parks, much of which were executed during the balance of the 1870’s, by using manure from the Union Stock Yards and sand from Lake Michigan, transforming these marshy sites. While other landscape gardening professionals – both Oscar DuBuis, who had been in my office and succeeded me as Engineer for Chicago’s West Parks, and, more recently, Jens Jensen – improved the landscape gardening of these parks in later years, the greater part of my firm’s planning has been retained. The area to the East of Central Park Boulevard is reported in the latest edition of the AIA Guide to Chicago to be the oldest landscaped space in a Chicago park. In 1888, after Chicago’s West Parks Commissioners were given jurisdiction over four smaller West Parks, I was asked to provide a landscape design for Union Park, which I did, using, at Mr. Olmsted’s request, Jacob Weidenmann, who had been brought to Chicago by Major Rust and others involved in the management of Mount Hope Cemetery, to the South of Chicago, to be that Cemetery’s Superintendent; however, Jacob had not been able to maintain the confidence of that Cemetery’s Board, his employment had been terminated, and, just as Horace Cleveland had to sue for his just compensation, Weidenmann sued. Notwithstanding Cleveland’s and Weidenmann’s litigation successes, both came to believe that their careers would be served best by leaving Chicago, and both did. However, again, I have gotten ahead of my story.

In addition, over the years, my services, as an architect, were called upon by the West Park Commissioners for several buildings, of which only these survive: the suspension bridge in Garfield Park (1870), the Field House in Union Park, which, once, served as the Headquarters for the West Parks Commission (1888), and the Stable and Shops in Douglas Park (1892, 1897, 1907).

Because of what, soon, happened, with respect to Graceland Cemetery, it is worth mentioning, here, that, in the early 1870’s, I had been contacted by John Deere of Moline, Illinois. In addition to designing a residence for him, he arranged for me to design Moline’s Riverside Cemetery, a municipal cemetery over the affairs of which he had considerable influence.

In the 1870’s, I completed the Portland Block for the Brooks brothers of Boston, and I designed Chicago's Lakeside Building for Levi Leiter.  The Portland Block was but five stories tall, and its aesthetic style was much like those erected before the Fire. However, its structural members – interior columns and cast iron beams - were concepts new to Chicago. Its unusually large windows, probably, attracted Sullivan to work in my office, but, because he had no training as an engineer, he could not contribute to the architectural designing that took account of the growing use of iron, as men like Bill Holabird could. Sullivan left after less than a year of employment in my office, leaving for Paris, to further his education at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts. Sullivan stayed at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts for less than a year, but, frustrated by what he found there, he returned to Chicago, not to my office, but to associate with Dankmar Adler. Based on his late in life remarks about me, long after I had died, he did not look at his professional experience in my office kindly.

The Portland Block turned out to be the only building that I designed for the Brooks brothers, as, after the depression of the 1870's, and William Holabird had left my office, the Brooks brothers went, largely, to him, for execution of their later Chicago real estate investments.  In 1875, I designed the Fletcher & Sharp Bank Building in Indianapolis, and, in 1876, I designed the First Leiter Building in Chicago and office buildings in Indianapolis for Joseph Moore and for the Holmes Estate of Boston. Gerry Larson of The University of Cincinnati has suggested that, for the first Leiter Building, I had been influenced by James McLaughlin’s Shillito Department Store in Cincinnati, of 1873. As rail travel to Cincinnati improved, greatly, after The War of the Rebellion, and Cincinnati riverboatmen saw the handwriting writ on the walls by the railroads, and I had many friends in Cincinnati from my time there before The War of the Rebellion, I could, well, have seen what McLaughlin had done for Shillito.

Because the economic depression that had started in 1873 decreased the demand for the professional services that my partnership with Schermerhorn and Bogart was offering, it was dissolved, and I entered the practice of architecture in my name, alone. (This remained the case, until my brief partnership with William Otis, in the late 1880’s.)

In addition, I expressed interest to the President of The University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, in the newly created position of Professor of Architecture and Design that had been authorized by the Regents of that University in 1875, especially as the courses to be taught were to “agree closely” with those offered by that University in Civil Engineering. Then, the only schools of architecture in the United States were at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Cornell University. The position that I had been offered at Rutgers University, as I was leaving military service, had been only in Civil Engineering, as was, then, still, the case at Harvard University. The President of The University of Michigan contacted Mr. Olmsted, who, in a letter qualified by him because of his limited experience with me, said that he knew of “no one likely available whom [he] would better recommend”. Mr. Olmsted’s letter suggests that his recommendation was less than wholehearted; however, my application for this teaching position was accepted. The University of Michigan’s course in Architecture and Design lasted only for the 1876-1877 year. The written material that I ordered for delivery to Michigan, for my use, reflects my interest in plant materials, on one hand, and, on the other, in the ideas advocated by Viollet-le-Duc.

I commuted, weekly, from Chicago to Ann Arbor, by overnight train, teaching on Wednesdays and Thursdays – meaning that, for that academic year, I was away from my family and my Chicago professional practice for three nights and two days of every week. Of course, I invested more time in my teaching than that, as my agreement with the University required 25-36 hours per week of writing and research. My courses were popular – nine full-time students - and as many as twenty more, attending my lectures.

One of my best students, during that 1876-1877 academic year, was Ossian Cole (“O. C.”) Simonds. Simonds was from near Grand Rapids, Michigan, and was, then, in his early twenties. On Simonds’ graduation in 1878, I offered, and he accepted, employment in my office in Chicago. Once I saw that he had familiarized himself with the operating practices of my office, I took him out to one of my jobs – the redesign of the addition to Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery that had resulted from the settlement of the differences between Graceland Cemetery Company and an aggressive local real estate developer named James Waller, in which the Cemetery Company had, just, obtained from Waller some marshy acreage that served to consolidate its holdings into its present acreage – a more manageable, roughly rectangular, shape than the acreage that had, theretofore, been set aside by it for Cemetery purposes – the rectangle formed by Green Bay Road (now, Clark Street) on the ridge on the West that constitutes a part of the Continental Divide, and Graceland Avenue (now Irving Park Road) and Montrose Avenue, on the South and North, respectively. On the East, was developable acreage owned by Waller, which was especially valuable, as we, all, knew that The Chicago & Evanston Steam Railway Company (later to become a bit of The Milwaukee Road) was to pass by that side of the Cemetery and create its Buena Park and Graceland rail stations, which was done in 1885. (After 1900, these stations were demolished; what is, now, the CTA North Line was erected; and The Milwaukee Road track area disintegrated into a small crime-ridden freight yard; in more recent years, that freight yard has been abandoned, and it has been replaced by a small park and neighborhood parking.)

Graceland Cemetery Company was no charity; it was a real estate developer. One of its several developments was the sale of burial lots in a parcel of property that would, in time, when enough lots were sold, be turned over to the Trustees of Graceland Cemetery, a separate legal entity created by the State Legislative action in 1865, much as, today, substantially completed condominium developments are turned over to an owner-controlled association that provides maintenance of the common areas. Other good landscape designers had, already, provided services to Graceland Cemetery, but the last of them – Horace Cleveland - was, then, tied up in a dispute over his fees with Chicago’s South Parks Commissioners, who were powerful Chicago men well-known to the then controlling person of Graceland Cemetery Company – Thomas Barbour Bryan. Mr. Bryan, while a Virginian, had been one of Lincoln’s earliest and strongest political supporters; he was an active lawyer and an even more active real estate investor and developer, both for his own family in Virginia and for others in the East; so, by the late 1870’s, Bryan and I moved in similar business and political – Republican - circles. He, too, had started his remarkably successful career in Cincinnati, joining the office of Judge Samuel Hart, a successful local politician. However, as a local Cincinnati newspaper put it, in 1858, Hart’s had “an unfortunate habit that impaired his energy and destroyed his usefulness”, leading to his death, when trying to board a moving train, and Bryan elected to move to Chicago. I expect that Bryan kept in touch with his Cincinnati connections (which included the family of President William Henry Harrison – Old Tippecanoe – at least as much as I did, and he, too, learned of Strauch’s success with Cincinnati’s Spring Grove Cemetery and its Eden Park. By 1869, Strauch had learned of Bryan’s plans for Graceland Cemetery, as he referred to it in a Spring Grove Cemetery publication as undeveloped, but promising,

By 1874, Mr. Bryan had delegated much of the operating responsibility of Graceland Cemetery Company to his nephew – Bryan Lathrop. (Yes; that is the Lathrop who, later, saw to the construction of the lovely Georgian style residence on Chicago’s North Lake Shore Drive, designed by McKim, Mead & White, where our Club, in recent years, has been having its season-opening dinners.) In 1877, Bryan and Lathrop lived in Elmhurst and commuted on The Burlington Road to Bryan’s office in The Bryan Block in downtown Chicago. I suspect that both men, during their commutes, had seen what my partnership with Schermerhorn and Bogart had done for Riverside and for Chicago’s West Parks.

In May, 1879, the management of Graceland Cemetery – led by Lathrop - accepted my plans and specifications for the improvement of the low lands of the Eastern portion of Graceland Cemetery, and, promptly thereafter, the roads drawn therein were laid out and the soil excavated and moved. In January, 1880, substantial landscaping (some $300,000 in today’s Dollars) commenced under the supervision of Simonds.

My introduction of Simonds to Lathrop had been successful – so successful that, later in 1880, Simonds elected to strike out on his own, with Bill Holabird, who had been in my office for a number of years, as his partner. They took with them my Graceland Cemetery project. In the following year, they were joined by Martin Roche, who had, also, been in my office for a number of years. However, in 1883, Simonds resigned his partnership with Holabird and Roche and became the full-time General Superintendent of Graceland Cemetery, on behalf of Graceland Cemetery Company.

As the presence of street cars on Clark Street and Graceland Avenue led to access by visitors to the Cemetery other than by rail, the rail access to the Cemetery was abandoned, and its East Gate Building was demolished. Simonds elected to use the services of his former partners Bill Holabird and Martin Roche - not mine, as the architects for the structures that were added to Graceland Cemetery in the 1890’s, in its place, several of which survive, today – some having been restored (the Administration Building and the Waiting Room) and one (the Chapel) now in restoration.

Simonds’ development in my employ into a successful professional, in his own right, was, hardly, unique, as my office had become a Mecca for architects wishing to start a Chicago practice. One of the first of such, to find his first footing, as a professional, was Dan Burnham. Dan, after distressing his father by his several changes of careers, first decided, while employed in my office in 1869, on a career in architecture. He moved on from my office to other offices of Chicago architects, before finding, in John Root, the partner that he needed, to execute the projects of prominent Chicago businessmen to which his father-in-law – John Sherman - was able to introduce him. I could make such analyses of the impact of time in my office on the careers of Bill Holabird, Martin Roche, Al Granger, Howard Shaw, Bill Otis, Jim Rogers and Irving Pond. (What Louis Sullivan learned, as an architect, was from Dankmar Adler, not from me.) In 1905, when I left the practice of architecture in Chicago, I knew that the men who had worked for me had done, and would do more, great things. One of the greatest compliments that one designer can pay to another is to adapt the ideas of the other into one’s own design efforts; imitation is, in fact, the sincerest form of flattery.

In 1883, I was approached by Arthur Ducat, on behalf of the Home Insurance Company. Because General Ducat had been an engineer, before his service to the Union, he was capable of understanding my recommendation that an iron skeleton be used for his company’s building. .  Ted Turak’s discussion of the use of iron structural shapes in Europe, even before my two periods of years in Paris, provides a good perspective of the state of structural designing in iron, before I proposed to Ducat that he approve my proposed use of iron shapes, and what I am about to say relies, greatly, on his book about my career.

Until the 1880’s, the cost of steel for structural shapes was even more prohibitive than was the cost of iron. In the 1850’s, during my schooling at L’Ecole Centrale, William Kelly and Henry Bessemer had invented the process of steel-making that became known as “The Bessemer process”. However, Andrew Carnegie did not see to the construction in Pittsburgh of the massive Edgar Thomson Works of the Phipps-Carnegie Company, for the making of steel by Bessemer’s process, until the 1880’s. At first, all steel production had been for rail use; however, when the economic depression of the early 1880’s suspended railroad construction, Andrew Carnegie’s steel sales personnel, led by Walter Strobel, called on me and persuaded me to permit the use of some steel in its completion.  Mr Carnegie converted his Union Works in Pittsburgh to the production of structural steel shapes. Thereafter, Strobel’s salesmen facilitated uses of structural steel shapes that were being pioneered in Chicago in my office and in the offices of my architect contemporaries, two-thirds of whom had spent some of their formative years in my office.

My decision to use steel in a part of the construction of The Home Insurance Building of 1883-1884 was as much of a technological break-through as was my design recommendation to General Ducat that the building have a skeleton structure of cast and wrought iron. Thus, I specified, for my later commercial buildings larger and larger percentages of steel, rather than iron, for their structural shapes.  My Home Insurance Company building is, of course, gone - demolished in the 1930's, to permit the construction of The Field Building.

Tom Misa of The University of Minnesota, in 1998, when he was at The Illinois Institute of Technology, published a book titled A Nation of Steel: The Making of America, 1865-1925.  His first two chapters were titled, The Dominance of Rails; 1865-1885 and The Structure of Cities, 1880-1900, respectively.  Misa has the time parameters correct: the iron and steel industry acquired the capacity to provide the variations in the specifications of structural steel that local rules and practices required.

That Carnegie-Phipps sought to corner that market was obvious to all; its tactics were rough; I complained of their involvement in pricing pools that kept the costs of steel far higher than necessary for the steel-makers to make a decent return on their investment.  Notwithstanding my complaints, the Carnegie-Phipps organization named one of its ore carriers for me, and that ship worked the Great Lakes, long into the 1900’s.

In the late 1880’s, Dan Burnham selected me as one of the three Chicago-based architects – Atwood, Sullivan and me – to design some of the main structures of The World’s Columbian Exposition – Atwood’s structure becoming The Fine Arts Building (surviving, today, as The Chicago Museum of Science & Industry), Sullivan’s becoming the Transportation Building, and my own becoming The Horticultural Building. My Horticultural Building was among the largest buildings of the Fair, and it and its garden surroundings (which I, also, designed) drew at least its share of praise. It was a structure to be designed for a special purpose – temporary – but, virtually, unique.  Bill Mundie's and my design took advantage of all that he and I, then, knew of our craft of architecture, but with a large dose of engineering.  The immense space that I was to create was not to distract from its contents.  It was to be as well-lit as the circumstances and the technology, then, permitted.  That project required me to go back to the landscape gardening considerations required for my first substantial Chicago area projects - Chicago's West Parks and Riverside – which is, undoubtedly, why Dan Burnham selected me to design that particular structure and its surroundings; as Mr. Olmsted was, already, involved in the landscape design of the entire Exposition, this selection of me had to have had his support.

Before the Exposition, I had been blessed by having had Bill Mundie come into my life, both as a professional and by marrying one of my nieces. One of Bill’s first assignments, upon his arrival in my office in 1884, had been to assist me in the construction of the Home Insurance Building; in that same year, it was Bill who brought good professional practices into the operation of my office, best evidenced by the Job Ledger that was commenced that year and has survived in the custody of the Chicago architectural firm that holds itself out as the successor to mine – Jensen & Halstead. Bill, successfully, carried the torch of my development of younger architects that I had lit, into the affairs of The Chicago Architectural (Sketch) Club in a manner that I was too senior to be able to achieve. I was a judge of that club’s design competitions for many years, encouraging the professional development of the draftsmen upon which my profession relies so heavily. I was a frequent speaker at dinners and other professional functions that were, then, so popular, sometimes delivering formal papers and other material suitable for more general publication. As I acquired the reputation of a bon vivant and raconteur, other presentations by me were far less formal and, even one could say, frivolous. Of them, only my reputation seems to have survived.

Elmer Jensen became the third name partner of Jenney, Mundie & Jensen, just as, because of my poor health, I retired from my firm and moved to Pasadena, California, where I died in June, 1907 – a bit over 100 years ago. While Bill Mundie had joined me in 1884 already trained in Canada to be an architect, Elmer had joined me in 1885 as an office boy. Elmer’s loyalty to the memory of my old firm has been demonstrated by his generous contribution, in the 1950’s, of significant time and effort, to see that much ephemera of my old firm would be preserved in the archives of The Art Institute of Chicago, by making available to the microfilming project of its Department of Architecture a large number of documents in the archives of my old firm – meaning that there is a publicly accessible source for research into what I and Mundie and some of our fellows had done after 1884. In addition, by a well-publicized lecture in 1950 at my other old Club - Chicago’s Union League Club - Elmer advanced the cause of my significant involvement in the development of the structural techniques necessary to build a commercially successful “skyscraper”.

While I did not insist that my firm’s clients let me control the design of the furniture and furnishings of their homes, some clients wished that I design such things for them. I did so, and I would see that they were executed properly. I am, especially, proud of a piece of Eastlake Style furniture – a sideboard – that can be see in the Hegeler-Carus residence in LaSalle, Illinois, which has been studied by Rolf Achilles of The Art Institute of Chicago, and Rolf has located another such piece, in the possession of Seattle Sutton, in Marseilles, Illinois – Yes, the Seattle Sutton of diet foods fame. This is irony, as, in my years in Paris, I had learned to appreciate good French food; I taught my wife how it should be prepared; I could not be happy having to eat what Seattle Sutton, so successfully, markets.

Ted Turak referred to my second Leiter Building, built as a retail store for the Siegel-Cooper organization - now, the Robert Morris Center - as my "masterpiece".  As a mature commercial space, it can, fairly, be deemed such. However, I, myself, deem my masterpiece to have been the Horticultural Building for The World's Columbian Exposition and its landscaped surroundings.

In addition, who knows, whether, had it been completed and put to its intended use, the "Spectatorium", intended to have been completed in time for operation during the Exposition, might, instead, have been deemed to have been my "masterpiece", which was under construction at the same time as the Exposition. The site of the Spectatorium was the Exposition, to its North, and it was intended by its promoters and investors (of which I was one) to complement the offerings of the Exposition. In the late 1880’s, when Bill Otis had been my partner, Bill Mundie and I had experience with a structure such as The Spectatorium, in participating in the design of the Panorama Building at Wabash and Hubbard in Chicago, for which we were local architects in the late 1880’s for John Carrère of Carrère & Hastings, shortly after that firm’s St. Augustine, Florida, successes for Henry Flagler.

Our fellow member, Joel Dryer, has presented to our Club a good "paper" on that design effort and its denouement – its collapse.  Joel has asked me if the fault for the collapse of the roof of the Spectatorium, which was the final straw of this undercapitalized project, that led to loss of its financial support, to its abandonment and to the sale of its remains, as salvage scrap, could be laid on the architect – my firm – as one of the investigators concluded that neither I nor the Contractor had a supervisor on site at the time of the collapse? I am reminded of the cost constraints imposed on the Museum that I designed for The University of Michigan and the cost-cutting tactics of its contractor and subcontractors. The Spectatorium Project – inventive and worthwhile as it was – had not been adequately capitalized by its owners. I did propose significant cost savings measures, which could have contributed to the absence of adequate supervision, but I believe that Mundie and I did just what every competent architect is expected, by all involved, to do. I, myself, believe that the Contractor cut too many corners, and the investigator found that to have been the case. Whatever, the effort became a tragedy for the promoter; he, shortly after organizing a miniature version of the Spectatorium, in which I, also, invested, that was a theatrical failure died.

A notable number of my designs for Chicago commercial structures, in addition to my second Leiter Building, have stood the tests of time well:

The Ludington Building (1891) - now Columbia College, at 1104 South Wabash Avenue, one of the first all-steel structures.

The Manhattan Building (1891) - at 431 South Dearborn Street, renovated in 1982 under the supervision of Wil Hasbrouck's firm, and, later, restored, faithfully by Bauer Latoza Studio.

The Association Building (1893) - more recently known as the Central YMCA Building, at 19 South LaSalle Street, almost across LaSalle Street from the original main entrance of The Northern Trust Company.

The Morton Building (1896) – now a part of The Hyatt on Printers’ Row Hotel, as a result of a renovation in 1987 of it and of its adjacent Duplicator Building by Booth/Hansen Associates.

The LaSalle-Monroe Building (1894) - built as the New York Life Building, at 39 South LaSalle Street, also across LaSalle Street from The Northern Trust Company.

As for my surviving residential designs, within Chicago, there are the 1882 house at 835 West Chambers Place; a little house of my short partnership with Bill Otis - the 1886 Tooker house at 836 North Dearborn Street; and the 1889 Cox house at 1427 North Astor Street, and I suspect that there are others in the Buena Park neighborhood, to the East of Graceland Cemetery, where I lived for a good number of years, but they are not identified in The AIA Guide to Chicago.

In or about Geneva Lake, Wisconsin, The Landmark Building, built as The Clair Hotel, remains, with its Milwaukee brick exterior skillfully restored under the management of Karl Otzen. Of the five residences on the shores of that lake that I designed, only that for Theodore Kochs (1893), now owned by a descendant of the Madlener family, survives; those for George Dunlap (1885), for Henry Porter of Illinois Steel Company (1891), for Nathaniel Fairbank (1892) and for Levi Leiter (1896) are gone.

In Milwaukee, its Railway Exchange Building - built in 1899 as The Hermann Building - survives, in need of restoration, but relatively pristine, with the offices of Russell Zimmermann, the locally well-known architect and historian of the architecture of Milwaukee, at its top.

In Riverside, its Water Tower (1871), its St. Paul’s (Episcopal) Church (1885) and several houses survive, but the Riverside Hotel (1871) is, long, gone.

For those of you who are live in Lake Forest, I had two substantial commissions there: Using the site for a municipal cemetery specified in 1884 by Almerin Hotchkiss – a great cemetery designer, in his own right - I laid out the original portion of the present Lake Forest Cemetery; it, as had been Graceland Cemetery, was refined by Simonds in 1901. Also, I designed “Blair Lodge” and its landscaped surroundings – “Blair Lodge” being the residence of Henry I. Blair, the construction of which had been funded by his father-in-law, Walter Larned. In 1905, the south portion of the Blair lot became the site of the Ernest Hamills’ residence, designed by Robert Spencer. In 1915, the site of “Blair Lodge” became a new home for the Charles Schweppes, she being a daughter of John Shedd.

For those of you who live in Winnetka, Bill Otis, after acquiring an education in architectural design at L’Ecole des Beaux Arts, joined my firm in 1881. He became a partner in 1887, married, and left my firm to start his own successful practice that resulted his designing several civic structures in Winnetka – most notably its Christ (Episcopal) Church.

As for my parks and cemeteries, the overall planning of each survives, as do most of the ponds, all of which were designed as a means of controlling water run-off or as a means of holding water for providing water to the surrounding greenery.  Landscape gardening cannot survive as long as structures, and landscape gardening designs are, often, modified, to meet changing current tastes.  Thus, the fact that Jens Jensen much modified the landscape gardening in the three large parks of Chicago's West Parks that I designed - and that Simonds much modified the landscape gardening of Graceland Cemetery - does not bother me.  In fact, Jensen's own work in all of Chicago’s West Parks - even his own original fine work in Columbus Park - has been much modified by others, and Simonds’ own good work in Graceland Cemetery has been much modified by Ted Wolff.  The "restoration" of landscape gardening designs, in the classic meaning of that word, is never feasible.

All in all, what is left of my work, in Chicago and elsewhere, constitutes, I think, respectable OEUVRE. What was that phrase that Twombly says that Sullivan used for me, in his (Sullivan’s) 1924 book, long after my death, “after his unfortunate habit impaired his energy and destroyed his usefulness” and caused his disputes with his clients: “Jenney was, only by courtesy, an architect”, suggesting that I was nothing but an engineer? Yes; I was trained as an engineer (and Sullivan had not been), but I was an engineer who had, also, acquired the skills of a landscape gardener and of an architect – skills that drew far more clients than did Sullivan’s artistic skills. One could say about Sullivan, “Sullivan was, only by courtesy, an architect; instead, he was an artist.” Poor man; what would have happened, after Adler found that his employment at The Crane Company was intolerable and resigned, had Sullivan been able to swallow his pride, and to find in himself the ability to recreate his partnership with Adler?

There is irony, in the fact that one could look upon the peak of Sullivan’s career and the peak of my career being our two quite different, but both successful, designs for among the largest and most patronized buildings of The World’s Columbian Exposition.

I have been asked by John Notz if I knew his great grandfather, Edward Uihlein, who lived from 1877 to 1921 in Chicago’s Wicker Park neighborhood; Uihlein was a West Parks Commissioner in the 1890’s. Uihlein was some 15 years younger than I. As Uihlein had come from Germany to the United States during The War of the Rebellion, he and I were not in the same social or business society. John tells me that Uihlein and I were, both, in St. Louis, shortly after that War and that both of us left St. Louis for Chicago, within a year of each other – both of us having perceived better prospects for ourselves in Chicago, than in St. Louis.

Perhaps, Adolph Cudell, who had worked with me on my 1872 Portland Block, and who, later, designed Uihlein’s 1877 Wicker Park house, introduced us, but I do not recall that happening. Besides, when Uihlein became active in politics, he was an Altgeld Democrat, and I was a life-long Lincoln Republican. While Uihlein was much interested in landscape gardening – so much so that he became known as “The Father of Humboldt Park” - my landscape planning of the West Parks and their connecting boulevards was executed many years before he became a West Parks Commissioner. However, when the West Parks Commission was approving the greenhouses that I designed in 1891 for Chicago’s three large West Parks, including one for Humboldt Park, Uihlein would, necessarily, have learned of me, and I of him.

Where Uihlein and I had to have met was in the course of the operation of the Horticultural Building of The World’s Columbian Exposition. Uihlein had seen to the construction of the largest conservatory in the Midwest in 1888, next to his Wicker Park home, and it was much publicized, in the press leading up to The Columbian Exposition. I must have been aware of Uihlein’s regular and substantial contributions of plant material into my Horticultural Building, both in the preparation for its opening and during the entire operation of the Exposition, but neither he nor I left any record of any connection among us.

In 1893, shortly after Altgeld became Governor of Illinois, he appointed Uihlein, another Democrat, to be a West Parks Commissioner. Then, I was, still, trying to get commissions to design the structures for West Parks that were, still, badly needed. Oscar DuBuis, who succeeded me at the West Parks, had been in my office and knew my design approaches, did not, substantially, modify my landscaping plans. Uihlein became a great advocate of Jens Jensen, whose landscape style became quite different from mine; Jensen developed a far more naturalistic style than was mine or that of DuBuis. While Jensen did not, while Uihlein was a West Park Commissioner, have the significant role in the West Parks, he obtained one after 1905 and was able to modify much of the planting material that I had specified.

I can understand why Uihlein was more comfortable, dealing with Jensen, rather than with me. I was (and, still, am) a Francophile and spoke French. Jensen was a Dane, and, while he had no use for the Prussians, he had been required to learn German in school; he had served, involuntarily, in the German Army in Bismarck’s time; and he related, well, to the South Germans like Uihlein, especially as neither man had any use for Bismarck’s having led Prussia into controlling Jensen’s Schleswig-Holstein and Uihlein’s Württemberg-Bavaria. Also, while Uihlein had emigrated to the United States, as a young man, during the course of The War of the Rebellion, he had not volunteered for military service, and I did not relate, as well, to men who were eligible and available for military service during The War of the Rebellion, but did not serve.

I died in 1907; I was cremated, and my ashes were returned to the plot in Chicago’s Graceland Cemetery where I had seen to the interment of my wife after her death in the 1890’s, well before mine. My financial circumstances at the time of my death were such that the creation and placement of a stone was deferred by my family. Over time, nothing was done, until John Notz took an interest in those of the design professionals who had been interred, without memorials, in Graceland Cemetery. He found that a memorial effort had been conducted in the 1980’s by The Chicago Architecture Foundation - a competition juried by prominent members of The Chicago Chapter of The American Institute of Architects - but the winning design by Thomas Schmitt of The University of Illinois at Urbana, selected by the jury appears not to have been in compliance with the rules of the Cemetery for monuments in the area my family’s plot, and the energy behind the project ceased, when the local principal proponent, Jethro Hurt, left The Chicago Architectural Foundation for greener pastures. A second memorial effort was made in 2006, which the Trustees of the Cemetery approved, and, in June, 2007, a new ground level, tasteful and appropriate monument was been placed in my family’s plot, surrounding the old marker of my wife and a new marker for me.

The Chicago Architecture Foundation, which conducts most of the public tours of Graceland Cemetery, under new management led by Lynn Osmond and Henry Kuehn, took an interest in what Graceland Cemetery was arranging, in my memory – a dedication of a new monument stone in my family plot, where there had been but a headstone for my wife. One of the Docents of The Chicago Architecture Foundation, Maurice Champagne, arranged for a Summer of special tours of my extant designs in and about Chicago’s Loop. In addition to these tours, there were lectures by Julia Sniderman Bachrach, the Archivist of The Chicago Park District; by Jerry Larson of The University of Cincinnati, who spent too much time disputing claims by others that I had invented the ‘skyscraper” – claims that I, never, myself, made; by Ed Torrez of Bauer/Latoza Studio on The Manhattan Building; by Kimberly Lindstrom and by David Dastur of the survivor of my old firm, now named “Jensen & Halstead”. The Chicago Architecture Foundation, also, arranged a bus tour of Chicago’s West Parks and a bus tour of Riverside.

The Chicago History Museum, which, recently had installed a new exhibit on noted Chicago architects gave me decent exposure therein, and The Museum hosted a Saturday morning Symposium at which Christopher Vernon of The University of Western Australia spoke on my work for Graceland Cemetery; Walker Johnson of Johnson-Lasky Architects spoke of the impact of my design of The Home Insurance Building; Rolf Achilles of The Art Institute of Chicago spoke on one of my furniture and furnishings designs; Wil Hasbrouck of The Prairie Avenue Bookstore spoke on my involvement in the activities of The Chicago Architectural (Sketch) Club; and Bill Bickford of DePree Bickford Associates spoke on his design of my monument.

My new monument was dedicated during the afternoon following the Symposium. Ted Turak’s son, Jonathan, was present. A member of the greater Jenney family who lives in Belvidere, Illinois, was present. Apt and kind words were said by Fred Wacker and by John Notz. Thank you, all of you whom I have named, for the recognition. That it comes 100 years after I died is “no problem”.

Per Whitney Gould, architecture commentator for The Milwaukee Journal (November 4, 2007):

“. . . [Architecture], like labor, does not exist in a vacuum. Context is critical. Of course, you can study [architecture] for its own sake; . . . But looking at [architecture] is more meaningful, when you know something about the [architect]. Where did he or she fit in with the broader currents of the time? For whom was the work produced, and under what circumstances? Who were the subsequent owners?”

I have tried to provide you some of the “circumstances” under which my architecture was created. As I reflect on what I tried to do, whether it was design of large or small structures - their insides and out – in my teaching and writing, to inform my contemporaries of what I felt was in good taste - in my promotion of the interests of my fellow professionals, especially my juniors - I hope that you will conclude that I was, in fact, "A Man for All Seasons".

If you have questions, I suggest that you ask them of John Notz, as I believe that he knows me almost as well as did Bill Mundie, Elmer Jensen and Ted Turak, none of whom is, now, living. John, certainly, knows me far better than did Louis Sullivan.

Thank you.

List of Publications by William Le Baron Jenney

Principles and Practice of Architecture (Cobb, Pritchard & Co., 1869)

Illustration of a single Residence, Building News (September 18, 1868)

“Construction of a Heavy Fireproof Building on Compressible Soil”, Engineering Record, Building Record and Sanitary Engineer (1885);

Illustration of two Residences, American Builder and Journal of Art (October 15, 1869)

“Lectures on Architecture” delivered at The Art Institute of Chicago), Inland Architect (1883-1884), Vol. I, at page 18;

“A Few Practical Hints”, Inland Architect (1889), Vol. XII, at p.19

“The Age of Steel and Clay”, Inland Architect (1889), Vol. XVI, at p. 77

Evolution of Style (1889);

A Few Practical Hints (ca. 1889) – republished in the January, 1889, issue of Inland Architect

Steel Building Construction – An Age of Steel and Clay (ca. 1890) – republished in the December, 1890, issue of Inland Architect

“American and Foreign Structural Steel”, Inland Architect (1890), XV, at p. 77

“The Chicago Construction, or Tall Buildings on Compressible Soil”, Inland Architect and News Record (1891).

“Whistler and Old Sandy in the 1850’s”, American Architect & Building News (1898), IX, at pp. 4-5;

Autobiography, Scrapbook, in Chicago Microfilm Project of The Art Institute of Chicago (no date)

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July 2, 2008, version – Copyright, John K. Notz, Jr. (2008)