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Eroding rock garden in Springfield getting tender, loving care

Shane Winter of Wisconsin’s Kohler Foundation helps restore the Hartman Rock Garden, created by H.G. Hartman at his Springfield home. The rock garden has been eroding after Hartman’s death in 1944. “You’ve got a treasure in your midst,” said a Kohler executive.

Barbara J. Perenic Shane Winter of Wisconsin’s Kohler Foundation helps restore the Hartman Rock Garden, created by H.G. Hartman at his Springfield home. The rock garden has been eroding after Hartman’s death in 1944. “You’ve got a treasure in your midst,” said a Kohler executive.

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By Andrew McGinn, Staff Writer 4:48 PM Friday, June 5, 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.”

A Hartman cousin in Springfield, George Henderson, had tried saving the rock garden in his own way by salvaging what he could.

Five or so years ago, he started to worry that Ben Hartman would rid himself of the deteriorating family rock garden for good.

“He hated it,” Henderson said. “It was labor to him.”

So with Hartman’s permission, Henderson began taking what he could.

At age 75, he’s willing to hand over the items, but he remains fiercely protective.

“When you get the place in order, you can have it,” he told the Kohler crew. “It’s not leaving Springfield.”

Once a tourist attraction in its day, the Hartman Rock Garden now seems primed for the unlikeliest of comebacks.

“It’s got a lot of potential,” Winter said.

Contact this reporter at (937) 328-0352 or amcginn@coxohio.com.

A call for photos

Have photos of the Hartman Rock Garden in its prime? If so, call the Kohler Foundation at (920) 458-1972.

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Enjoyed this and other article and the pictures on the history of the Rock Garden. We took our children to see them over the years. Were there any printed News & Sun articles on the Rock Garden. In these it said June 5th and 6th but I haven't been able to find them in the actual newspaper. My wife has saved June and July papers and we can't find any articles in these papers. Please contact us if you find the date it was published in the News & Sun.

C J
9:18 PM, 7/19/2009

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