Paul and Matilda Wegner Grotto

Paul and Matilda Wegner's retirement project in Monroe County, Wisconsin, includes a chapel with a nave about ten feet long, a replica of an ocean liner and a replica of their anniversary cake, all in concrete and glass.

According to Kohler Foundation, the Wegners emigrated from Germany, farmed near the village of Cataract and later moved to nearby Bangor, where Paul ran a Ford garage until he retired in 1927. A visit to Father Mathias Wernerus's Holy Ghost Park at Dickeyville inspired them to start their own. In the summer of 1929 they began building fences, and the work continued, mostly in summer, until after 1936. The result is a fence with a concrete archway spelling HOME in crushed black glass, a Peace Monument, a Glass Church, a twelve-foot concrete replica of the Bremen ocean liner and a replica of their 50th-anniversary cake. Broken beer bottles, carnival glass and heirloom china are set among the glass shards, Kohler Foundation says.