Hartman Rock Garden

Road trips are a time to look at Roadside America and see what environment-builders did their work along the path I'm taking. Recently, on a drive back from Northern Virginia, I found out about the Hartman Rock Garden in Springfield, Ohio, east of Dayton, and stopped for a (too-short) visit.


Harry George "Ben" Hartman began creating his rock garden in 1932 at the age of 48 when he was laid off from his job as a molder during the Depression. He lived just another 12 years, and during that time create 47 buildings or other objects in his family's yard.


The Little Church Around the Corner was the first building he made. It included furniture and carpeting inside and has stained-glass windows on either side (visible here on the left side).

The largest structure is the Cathedral, seen in the background in this photo, behind the arbor and flower bed:


It's 14 feet tall with numerous niches to hold figures and scenes, including the Last Supper and multiple Madonnas:


At the foot of the Cathedral is Reco Sporting Goods, a store that Ben frequented in Springfield:


The Castle is just a bit down the way from the Cathedral:


It's 12 feet tall, and Ben claimed it was made from 100,000 stones. It has a moat (the white area you can see at lower left in the photo above), drawbridge, and 107 windows, and is believed to be based on a castle in West Virginia that Ben saw on a postcard his wife Mary received from a friend.


The paths you walk between the building are narrow and inlaid with messages from Ben, some religious, but others more general.


Noah's Ark, with 14 pairs of animals ascending the plank.


Fort Dearborn (next to the Castle).


The School House was the second building Ben made.

In the last few years of his life, Ben began building in a new area of the yard, which he called the Other Side of the World. He intended to fill it with landmarks from around the world.


One section he finished is Schoenbrunn Village, models of buildings from a Moravian missionary village in eastern Ohio. They're a bit larger than dollhouse scale and appear to be cast concrete.


The final piece Ben completed was the Cherub Gateway, a wall that is interpreted as his version of the gateway to heaven, filled with nooks for religious figures.


The gateway is flanked by two cast and painted concrete cherubs (with the Moravian village in the background).

After Ben died of silicosis in 1944, Mary Hartman maintained the gardens and structures for another 53 years. She died in 1997. In 2008, the Kohler Foundation of Wisconsin purchased the site and restored it, then transferred ownership to a local Friends of the Hartman Rock Garden organization. It had a grand reopening in 2010.

The garden is open 365 days a year from dawn to dusk. It's not very far off of I-70 and was not hard to find. Self-guided tours are free, though donations are encouraged.

Be sure to pick up the detailed brochure and site map when you start your tour. In other words... don't be like me, who wandered through, picked up the brochure at the end, then wished I had consulted the map while I was on site!

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Past posts about environment builders:

Finding Shangri-La

Whirligig Park

Randyland, Not to Be Missed in Pittsburgh

Frog Pond Farm (North)

Outsider artists in Sheboygan

Outsider art, 2012

Save the Wells Street Art Park

The Sculptures of Tom Every

Herman Rusch's Prairie Moon

Details of Dickeyville

The Glass Grotto in Cataract, Wisconsin

Rocks and Glass at the Rudolph Grotto

Wouterina de Raad, environment builder

Dick and Jane's Spot, Ellensburg, Washington

The Enchanted Highway in North Dakota

Concrete Wisconsin

Garden of Eden in Lucas, Kansas

Another Kansas Original: M.T. Liggett