Ben started his school in the spring of 1932. A newspaper story that August read, “Mr. Hartman has a skillful eye for arranging his flower beds. This year, in March, to be exact, another idea occurred to Mr. Hartman. Why not enhance the beauty of his gardens with stone replicas of the old fashioned one roomed school house [and] the well which held ‘the old oaken bucket’, made so famous in song and story.” The story continued, “Mr. Hartman got himself some cement, some small sand stones, a trowel, a wheelbarrow, small bits of glass and started to work.”
Ben constructed the School House beside the family residence, beginning a line of objects that today stretches from Lincoln’s Cabin to the Canoe. The school faced the side yard and backed onto a small sidewalk immediately north of the residence. Ben later constructed a second sidewalk that ran in front of the school, allowing visitors to easily view both sides of the object without entering the grass.
Ben’s School House mimics the classic one-room schoolhouses that were common during his childhood. Ben’s belief in the importance of a good education became a key theme in his art, in part because he was denied a basic education during his own childhood. For unknown reasons, Ben left school after the second grade. The School House is the earliest object that conveys this educational or moralistic message at the Hartman Rock Garden. Objects like the Canoe – which encouraged self-reliance with its “Paddle Your Own Canoe” sign – followed later that same year.
Ben’s School House may have also been influenced by the poem “Indian Children” by Annette Wynne, which was published in the 1919 book For Days and Days: A Year-Round Treasury of Child Verse:
Where we walk to school each day
Indian children used to play,
All about our native land,
Where the shops and houses stand.
And the trees were very tall,
And there were no streets at all,
Not a church, not a steeple —
Only woods and Indian people.
Only wigwams on the ground,
And at night bears prowling round —
What a different place today
Where we live and work and play.
Ben later placed Native American figurines next to the school and would recite the first two lines of the poem to visitors.
