Concrete Parks of the Midwest Hollandale, WI

Grandview in Hollandale was the home of Nick Engelbert, who was born in Austria in 1881 and immigrated to the United States in the early 20th Century. In 1913, he married Katherine Thoni, a Swiss immigrant, and spent their honeymoon in the village of Hollandale where they soon settled and raised four children on their seven acre farm. Engelbert also worked as a cheese maker and in the 1920s he and Katherine started the Grandview Dairy.

Engelbert created his first concrete sculpture in the 1930s while recovering from a sprained ankle. Family members recalled that initially he was quiet about his sculptures but he kept on building them. By 1950 his entire yard was transformed into a landscape of over 40 sculptures, arranged within rich and colorful garden beds designed by his wife. To top it off, Engelbert decorated the exterior of his clapboard farmhouse with a colorful mosaic of concrete, embellished with stones, shells, glass shards, and fragments of dinnerware and porcelain figurines.

Like the other self-taught artists, the sculptures were influenced by his experiences, his heritage and popular culture. His sculptures depict patriotism, history, mythology and fairy tales. The sculptures include Snow White and Seven Dwarfs, an American Eagle, a Stork with Baby, a Viking of Norway, a monkey and organ grinder, and Neptune's Fountain. Engelbert's landscape also features monkeys playing in a tree, Swiss patriots standing tall, and at one time had Uncle Sam consorting with a Democratic donkey and Republican elephant. A decorative fence also surrounds his property.

But, he was not done: In 1951 on his 70th birthday, Engelbert received a set of oil paints and he began to teach himself to paint. During the next decade he created a second major body of art consisting of 74 paintings depicting scenes of his sculptural environment, exotic places he visited and humorous scenes of everyday life.

After Katherine died in 1960, Nick left Grandview to move closer to his children. He died in 1962 and Grandview was sold at auction. The owner neither cared for the sculptures nor the bedecked house and during three decades of neglect the statues and house deteriorated, succumbing to damage from wind, rain, snow, ice, fallen tree limbs and vandalism.

Again to the rescue, the Kohler Foundation purchased Grandview in 1991. Restoring the rundown house and crumbling sculptures took three years. Many were restored. Others could not be salvaged and were recreated incorporating some of the original work. Still some, like Uncle Sam and Paul Bunyan, have been lost forever. Like Smith's works, a few of Engelbert's statues are on display at the Kohler Art Center. In 1998 the Kohler Foundation gifted Grandview and the house to the Pecatonica Educational Charitable Foundation.

GRANDVIEW

Hollandale on Map of Wisconsin

The Organ Grinder with monkey not only welcomes visitors but also provides a handy donation box to collect funds for ongoing preservation of Grandview. Such organ grinders were a common site in Europe during Nick's boyhood. The glass and shell encrusted house in the background (left) is where Nick's family lived.