Hildebrandmonument 

Jan Bronner

A perfect place to rest on one of the benches and look at the fountain and sculptures.

The sculpture group depicts novel characters from Hildebrand's book Camera Obscura, a bestseller in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The stories are largely set in Haarlem and its surroundings.
Jan Bronner, was commissioned in 1914 but was not finished until 1948. It took until 1962 before the statues were placed in the southern part of the Kleine Hout, mainly because of the lack of money and due to disagreements about where the statues should be placed. Jan Bronner held that sculpting is architecture and architecture is sculpting. In these sculptures it is apparent that his work was influenced by the architects of the Amsterdam school movement in the 1930’s.

The original stone statues were damaged. From 1985 to 2009, the fountain featured plastic replicas of the statues, but these too proved to be too fragile. Our foundation restored the sculpture group in collaboration with the municipality of Haarlem.