Jens Fredrick Larson

Jens Fredrick Larson (10 August 1891 – 6 May 1981), 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. He served as pursuit pilot and a flying ace in World War I.

Early life

Born in Waltham, Massachusetts in 1891, the son of a Swedish immigrant, 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. After Harvard, he worked for the architectural firm Brown & Vallance in Montreal. 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 Collcutt in London, and then returned to Montreal.

Military service

After the outbreak of World War I, Larson joined the Canadian Army, where he was known as "Swede". After service with the field artillery for nineteen months, he transferred to the Royal Flying Corps on 19 October 1916. He served with the 24 and 34 Training Squadrons. On 31 July 1917, he became one of the original pilots of No. 84 Squadron, equipped with SE-5s. 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.