The Bourquin collection consists of landscape architectural drawings, professional papers, and visual materials documenting the careers of Alice and Jessie Bourquin. The collection has been divided into the following series: Landscape Architectural Drawings; Jessie Bourquin Papers; Alice Bourquin Papers; Joint Projects and Activities; Hillwood Subdivision; and Photographs and other Visual Materials.
Twins Alice and Jessie Bourquin were born in Muskegon, Michigan in 1909. Their father James, president of Continental Motors, moved the family to Grosse Pointe the next year. At his death in 1923 the Bourquins moved to Hillwood, the family property in Ann Arbor which had been used on week-ends and vacations. Alice and Jessie attended the University of Michigan, taking classes in languages, the arts, and literature while earning teaching certificates in French. A course in landscape design taught by Aubrey Tealdi appealed to their love of art and nature, inspiring them to take city planning courses at the Sorbonne in Paris after graduation and to earn master's degrees in landscape design from the University of Michigan in 1934.
They began a private landscape design practice in Ann Arbor that same year, but found clients scarce due to the Depression. Beginning in 1935 Alice went to work for the State Highway Department in Lansing. The first woman landscape architect hired by the highway department, she did not let minority status deter her, but went on to a 39-year career which involved assisting in the design of most of the 103 roadside parks on the Michigan state highway system. Jessie Bourquin carried on the landscape design practice alone for five years, then joined her sister in Lansing, where she went to work for the Michigan Department of Commerce as an economic research analyst. The Bourquins lived together in Lansing, retired together in 1974, and returned to the family property in Ann Arbor.
Beginning in the 1930s the sisters and their brother James had begun to subdivide and develop the family acreage on Geddes Avenue near the Arboretum. By the 1960s four subdivisions, Hillwood I-IV, had been constructed. After their retirement the Bourquins began the last phase of development on 25 hilly, wooded acres, maintaining the strict building and use restrictions which had served to preserve privacy and natural beauty throughout the property. All Hillwood residents become members of the nonprofit Hillwood Community Preserve Association, and all building exteriors, siting, and tree-cutting had to be approved by the Bourquins.
For their 80th birthdays the American Society of Landscape Architects sponsored a party for the Bourquin sisters, who also received certificates of appreciation from Governor James Blanchard and the Michigan House and Senate. They continued to live on Hillwood into the 1990s in their 1985-designed "dream house."
Beyond their professional lives, the twins enjoyed traveling around the United States and Europe. Neither sister ever married. Alice passed away in 1995 with Jessie following in 1999.
