History
The grounds of the A. C. Becker property have attained significance as one of the finest remaining Prairie Style landscapes. As articulated by Wilhelm Miller in The Prairie Spirit in Landscape Gardening (1914), the Prairie Style's pragmatic wisdom was anchored in the Great Lakes/Midwestern regional native landscape and enhanced a Picturesque design approach with sustainable plantings and local materials. The Becker Estate brought together virtually all of the elements of this movement. Jensen and his protégé Marshall Johnson developed a ravine path system with moraine-style stone outcroppings, a gentle view down a "long meadow", a quiet reflecting pool sited in a grove of trees, and a calming entry drive that wound through the woodland. Midwestern native woody plants and rustic bridges and features supported the tranquility of the site. As a formal element, Jensen also included a walled formal garden with native flagstone quartered pathways, a contrast he also employed in designs at Evanston, IL, and Indianapolis.
The Becker Estate design developed in part out of Jensen's campaign to preserve the Indiana Dunes as public parkland. The dunes were on the south shore of Lake Michigan and a distinctive regional landscape. However, many citizens feared public ownership and access so soon after the 1917 Bolshevist Revolution in Russia. As an homage to the Indiana Dunes, Jensen recreated its conditions as an element of this design. Later, due in great part to Jensen's efforts, the Indiana Dunes themselves went into public ownership: today, they are open to visitors as the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore and the Indiana Dunes State Park.
The house was renovated in the 1950s, with International Style windows. Fortunately, much of this new work is on the lakeside of the grounds and away from the majority of the Jensen landscape: this new work could be removed. Between 1988 and 1998, landscape architect Steve Christy restored many features of the Becker Estate, and garden designer Doug Hoerr reestablished the formal garden. In the 1990s the site opened (on a reversible basis) as an educational resource for tour groups of interested professionals and enthusiasts.
Of Becker Estate's original 20 acres, a 17.5-acre core still remains. Today, it is the finest of the three large-scale Jensen-designed North Shore estates threatened with subdivision . The others are Harry Clow's "Landsdowne" (1911, with an earlier house by architect Benjamin Marshall) and William V. Kelley's "Stonebridge" (1916, with a house by architect Howard Shaw). The property presently is in receivership, and it is anticipated that the current owners will dispose of the Becker Estate at the best price possible.
