Jens Fredrick Larson

Jens Fredrick Larson (10 August 1891 – 6 May 1981),[1] sometimes credited as Jens Frederick Larson, was an American pilot and architect known for designing several Colonial Revival style college campuses: Dartmouth College, Bucknell University, Colby College, Wake Forest University, and others.[2] He served as pursuit pilot and a flying ace in World War I.[3]

Jens Fredrick Larson
Born(1891-08-10)August 10, 1891
Waltham, Massachusetts
DiedMay 6, 1981(1981-05-06) (aged 89)
Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Buried
Dalton Memorial Garden, Winston-Salem, North Carolina
Allegiance United States
Service/branchRoyal Air Force (United Kingdom)
UnitRoyal Air Force
Battles/wars World War I

Early life

Born in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1891, Larson worked at a Boston architecture firm and then won a scholarship to the Harvard architecture school, where he studied from 1910 to 1912, and where Harvard's Colonial/Georgian style campus may have influenced Larson's preferred architectural style.[2]: 5  After Harvard, he worked for the architectural firm Brown & Vallance in Montreal.[2]: 6  During this time he spent about a year in Great Britain, where he apprenticed with Sir John James Burnet in Glasgow and then with Thomas Edward Colcutt in London, and then returned to Montreal.[2]: 7 

Military service

After the outbreak of World War I, Larson joined the Canadian Army, where he was known as "Swede".[4] After service with the field artillery for nineteen months, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps on 19 October 1916.[3] He served with the 24 and 34 Training Squadrons.[3] On 31 July 1917, he became one of the original pilots of No. 84 Squadron, equipped with SE-5s.[3] He earned nine official victories, the last of which was an LVG twin-seater which crashed inside Allied lines after he knocked out the observer.[3] Larson was hospitalized in 1918 and did not see any further combat service.[3]

Architecture

Larson returned to Canada in January 1919 before making his home in Hanover, New Hampshire, where he was architect in residence at the Ivy League school Dartmouth College from 1919 to 1947.[4][5][6] According to scholar Rod Andrew Miller, Larson's 1928 Baker Memorial Library at Dartmouth "garnered much attention"; Miller quoted a June 1930 letter to Larson from Princeton University librarian James T. Gerould that said: "The longer I study the Dartmouth building the more thoroughly convinced I am that, in its adaptation to purpose, it is the best building we have in the country."[2]: 32  Larson's work was part of the architecture event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics.[7] He became a member of the Association of American Colleges Commission on College Architecture,[8]: 54  and in 1933 he coauthored with Archie Palmer the book Architectural Planning of the American College.[9] In the 1930s he redesigned the campuses of the Little Ivy schools Bucknell University[10] and Colby College.[11] He was awarded the Legion of Honour in France for his design of the Maison Internationale at the Cité Internationale Universitaire de Paris, which opened in 1936.[8]: 62  Among other projects, he designed buildings for the Institute for Advanced Study,[12] Lehigh University,[13] University of Louisville,[8]: 56  and St. Francis Xavier University.[14] He completed a full design for the University of Louisville, but the project was quashed in part due to World War II.[8]: 56 [15] He eventually settled in North Carolina, where he designed the new Wake Forest College campus in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, and he retired in 1971.[2]: 11  He died in Winston-Salem on 6 May 1981.[1][4]

Other architects that Larson respected included Ralph Adams Cram and Charles A. Platt.[2]: 8 

For more than fifty years, Jens Fredrick Larson designed almost exclusively in Colonial Revival style before and during the period when the extremely different mid-century modern architecture was rising in popularity.[8]: 53  Several of his buildings echo the structure of Independence Hall in Philadelphia (see also Independence Hall replicas and derivatives).[8]: 54 

See also

References
  1. "Jens Fredrick Larson". Find A Grave. Retrieved 3 December 2018.
  2. Miller, Rod Andrew (May 1998). Jens Fredrick Larson and American collegiate Georgian architecture (Ph.D. thesis). Louisville, KY: University of Louisville. OCLC 53164611. ProQuest 304428822. For an extensive list of campuses and buildings that Larson designed, see Appendix I, pp. 96–105.
  3. Franks, Norman L. R.; Bailey, Frank W. (1992). Over the Front: A Complete Record of the Fighter Aces and Units of the United States and French Air Services, 1914–1918. London. ISBN 0948817542. OCLC 28223455.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  4. "Jens Fredrick Larson". theaerodrome.com. Retrieved 17 November 2013.
  5. "Previous Master Plans". www.dartmouth.edu. Dartmouth College. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  6. Meacham, Scott; Mehling, Joseph (2008). Dartmouth College: An Architectural Tour. The Campus Guide. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. ISBN 9781568983486. OCLC 182857019.
  7. "Jens Fredrick Larson". Olympedia. Retrieved 31 July 2020.
  8. Miller, Rod Andrew (2006). "Jens Fredrick Larson and colonial revival". In Wilson, Richard Guy; Eyring, Shaun; Marotta, Kenny (eds.). Re-creating the American Past: Essays on the Colonial Revival. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. pp. 53–66. ISBN 0813923484. OCLC 61362746.
  9. Larson, Jens Fredrick; Palmer, Archie MacInnes (1933). Architectural Planning of the American College. New York: McGraw-Hill. OCLC 906751.
  10. Durso, Thomas W. (Winter 2009). "A campus with a view: today's campus master planners build on the original vision of Jens Fredrick Larson, who, early in the 20th century, was already thinking about the 21st". Bucknell Magazine. Bucknell University. pp. 18–23. ISSN 1044-7563. Archived from the original on 30 May 2010. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  11. Nicholson, Stanley A. (March 1987). "The plan for a new Colby". The Colby Alumnus. Vol. 76, no. 2. Colby College. pp. 10–15. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  12. "History and Architecture – Libraries and Archives". Institute for Advanced Study. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  13. Yates, W. Ross (1992). Lehigh University: A History of Education in Engineering, Business, and the Human Condition. Bethlehem, PA: Lehigh University Press. p. 193. ISBN 0934223173. OCLC 24066000.
  14. Cameron, James D. (1996). For the People: A History of St. Francis Xavier University. Montréal; Buffalo: Published for St. Francis Xavier University by McGill-Queen's University Press. pp. 245, 269–270. ISBN 077351385X. JSTOR j.ctt812x0. OCLC 34572432.
  15. "Jens Fredrick Larson and Dr. John W. Taylor in front of model of University of Louisville, 1949 – U of L Images". digital.library.louisville.edu. University of Louisville. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  16. "Baker-Berry Library History". www.dartmouth.edu. Dartmouth College. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  17. Cox, Dwayne D.; Morison, William James (2000). The University of Louisville. Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky. p. 81. ISBN 0813121426. JSTOR j.ctt130j4z0. OCLC 41131816.
  18. "Miller Library – History of Colby's Buildings". web.colby.edu. Colby College. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  19. Daniel Sterner, Trinity Lutheran Church, Worcester (1951), Historic Buildings of Massachusetts, November 25, 2016.
  20. Seth Thompson, Trinity Lutheran Church, Worcester, Massachusetts, Sacred Spaces of New England.
  21. "From Special Collections/University Archives: Who is Ellen Clarke Bertrand?". lit.blogs.bucknell.edu. Bucknell University. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  22. "Wake Forest University". journalnow.com. Winston-Salem Journal. 30 July 2018. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
  23. "About the Library – ZSR Library". zsr.wfu.edu. Wake Forest University. Retrieved 3 February 2021.
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