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Hartman Rock Garden being restored by generous foundation

Built in the '30s, the folk-art landmark will soon look better than it has in decades

Barbara J. Perenic Kohler Foundation conservator Shane Winter works to restore the Hartman Rock Garden on Russell Avenue.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Photos: Hartman Rock Garden restoration

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer Updated 2:32 AM Saturday, June 6, 2009

SPRINGFIELD — They’re referred to as “environment builders,” which makes it sound like they flourished and vanished with all the awe and mystery of the Mound Builders, the Maya or the Inca.

What they accomplished is no less impressive.

While separated by miles, what they left is all strangely similar.

“How in this point in time, in isolated areas, how did they know to do this?” Mark Chepp wondered as he stood amid one environment builder’s legacy.

They worshipped the same God.

They kept a historical record of their people.

And they were fans of Disney movies who really, really loved the U.S.A.

“There are always eagles,” noted Ben Caguioa, an art conservator working to restore the Hartman Rock Garden.

The folk-art landmark hidden away in Springfield’s southwest corner, which soon will look better than it has in decades thanks to the efforts of a Wisconsin foundation, is a product of its time by a textbook environment builder.

To fight boredom — some of it brought on by retirement, some of it brought on by the harsh realities of the Depression — the environment builders set out to turn their yards to stone in a style that recalls the grotto tradition.

They almost always were men. They almost always had a day job in which they worked with their hands.

They believed Jesus was king, the United States was His favored country and Mae West was heaven-sent. Their rock gardens became concrete shrines to biblical, patriotic and pop culture icons.

“It’s similar but different,” conservator Shane Winter said of the local rock garden. “There were a ton of Impressionists but just one Monet. There are only so many ways to use concrete and stone.”

And like the Maya, their civilization is in ruins.

Saving Hartman’s vision

Since the 1970s, it’s been the mission of Wisconsin’s Kohler Foundation to preserve this kind of stuff — an art form most people don’t even really consider art.

The foundation recently expanded that mission outside its home state, purchasing the Hartman Rock Garden with one purpose.

To restore it. Completely.

Work began in May and will last all summer.

“You’ve got a treasure in your midst,” Kohler Executive Director Terri Yoho recently told a gathering of local foundations.

The Kohler Foundation — and, yes, that’s the same Kohler as in your bathroom sink — restores such sites and then gives them back to a local nonprofit for upkeep.

“When Kohler Foundation hands over a property,” she explained, “it is fully preserved.”

So far, though, the early restoration process looks eerily like a dig at a Mayan temple.

“It’s like a real archeological excavation,” said Winter, who’s working on a master’s in archeology at Texas A&M University.

For example, at some point in the past decade, a small arched bridge over a pond was removed and concrete poured in. Concrete figures of bears and birds were thrown in as fill.

“We want to get the bridge back,” Winter said.

The Kohler conservators were able to recover a half-dozen of the discarded figures — and they’re prepared for much worse.

“We’ve had projects where we’ve had statues delivered to us in 1-inch chunks,” Winter said. “If we can do that, we can do this.”

But without photos of what it looked like, restoring the Hartman Rock Garden seems about as easy as putting an Incan city back together again.

They’re thinking of restoring the rock garden to what it looked like in 1944, the year H.G. Hartman died, but they don’t have much to work from.

“It’s a grainy photo from July 3, 1989,” Winter said. “There’s a photo from the ’30s, but it’s even grainier.”

And by most counts, the rock garden was home to hundreds of little concrete and metal figures, all made by Hartman, not to mention concrete and stone replicas of Independence Hall, Mount Vernon and more.

“Kohler gets more and more strenuous projects for us,”

Winter said.

A dream come true

As director emeritus of the Springfield Museum of Art, Chepp has long championed self-taught artists like Hartman, who began his project in his Russell Avenue yard in 1932 after losing his job as an iron molder.

“He had all that energy from working with his hands,” Chepp said. “Suddenly, he had to do something.”

Chepp, however, seemed destined to watch Hartman’s rock garden — with its concrete replica of the White House and its meticulous stone castle — crumble.

He couldn’t get the local preservation community interested in it.

The Kohler Foundation stepped in after its future seemed even more uncertain than usual.

On Christmas Eve 2007, its caretaker, Ben Hartman, who reluctantly watched over his father’s creation, passed away.

The property — the house, a vacant lot across the street and, yes, the rock garden — was put up for sale for less than $60,000.

“I just think it’s a miracle these guys bought it,” Chepp said. “It’s a dream come true. It really is.”

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