Jens Jensen The Living Green

Carey Lundin/2013/55 min/ Health & Environment

This award winning documentary portrays how Danish-born Jens Jensen (1860 – 1951) rose from street sweeper, to ‘dean of landscape architecture’, to pioneering conservationist in troubled, early Chicago. At great risk to his family, he battles corruption and unbridled industrial expansion to bring ‘the living green’ into the wretched lives of Chicago’s workers. Jensen leverages relationships with Frank Lloyd Wright, Julius Rosenwald, and Henry Fordto create a conservation fervor that stopped the steel mills from industrializing an entire Indiana shoreline.