The Forestiere Underground Gardens: A Pictorial Journey. Silvio Manno. Fresno: Ionian Publications, 2007
At long last Baldassare Forestiere's Underground Gardens has been honored with a photographic work that does his grottoes justice.
Fresno educator and historian, Silvio Manno is a long-time resident of Fresno and has put in many years in the production of his book. Manno's work includes an introduction in which he gives an overview of Forestiere's life and what ultimately led him to begin digging his grottoes on his remote section of land in north Fresno in the early 1920s.
Born in 1879, Forestiere immigrated to America from a small mountain village in Sicily. After traveling across the U.S. and working at various jobs, he finally settled in Fresno.
With hard work, a value shared by all Italian immigrants, Forestiere became a successful valley farmer, owning more than 1000 acres of land.
While he worked in his vineyards throughout the valley, each evening Forestiere returned to his underground home in north Fresno and continued to expand his grottoes, until his death by pneumonia in 1946.Throughout his life and for years after, Forestiere was considered something of an eccentric for his life underground. Growing up in Fresno, I had heard many unflattering accounts of this mysterious man's life from residents of our Italian community.
However, as I have developed in my essay, Creative Responses to the Italian Immigrant Experience in California: Baldassare Forestiere's “Underground Gardens” and Simon Rodia's “Watts Towers” (The Italian American Review, 2001), the Underground Gardens was Forestiere's way of coping with his dislocation and displacement as a Sicilian immigrant in America.
Forestiere's grottoes are a replica of his boyhood and adolescent life in his remembered Sicily. His grottoes and his gardens recall the caves, catacombs, and rich farmland that surrounded his native village in Sicily.
His father was a successful olive farmer. But the family's land would never have passed on to Baldassare. So he set out as a young man to seek his fortune in America.
In the process, he constructed one of the world's most renowned folk art sites. It remains a moving legacy of Forestiere's entire immigrant generation's struggle and success in America.
Like all great folk artists, Simon Rodia included, Forestiere used the materials of his natural surroundings for his construction.
Approximately twenty-four inches below the top soil on his land is a layer of hardpan, the density of concrete, which Forestiere had to penetrate to dig his grottoes.
After breaking through the layer, he then fashioned bricks of various sizes out of the hardpan slabs and used them to support his arches, vaults, and windows in his grottoes.
Manno's photographs are clear and sharp. They illustrate not just the overall plan of Forestiere's site, but, most important of all, the detail in Forestiere's craftsmanship in the arches and vaults that he had to construct to support his underground grottoes.
After his informative introduction, Manno goes on to explain room by room Forestiere's creation. It is clear from Manno's excellent photography that Forestiere was not just a digger, but an artist.
He planned the arrangement of the grottoes as he dug. His craftsmanship is apparent not only in his carefully constructed arches and vaulted ceilings but also in the symmetry of his grottoes.
To complete his imaginative Sicily underground, Forestiere planted a garden. He allowed light and water into his grottoes through a series of open spaces, portals, and vents.
Manno explains the vents' ancient origins and how they work to control the flow of air and rain water and help maintain a constant temperature throughout the grottoes.
Manno's photographs do justice to all aspects of Forestiere's creation: his use of space, natural materials, light, and vegetation. His work will aid in dispelling the myths that have for too many years surrounded the man who created this remarkable folk art site.
We can only hope that Manno's work will focus more attention on the Underground Gardens so that in the near future it can be awarded a place on the state and national registries as an historical site in need of preservation. The Underground Gardens are in dire need of funding to prevent further erosion of the grottoes by rain, as well as animal and insect infestation.
On the brink of irreparable decay, Simon Rodia's Watts Towers were recognized as an historical landmark and restored through grants by the state of California. Rodia's legacy will live on forever in Los Angeles.
Forestiere's legacy also deserves to be protected and preserved for future generations. The Underground Gardens represent the hopes and conflicts of an entire generation of Italian immigrants. It would be a shame if Forestiere's grottoes were allowed to decay and one day be destroyed.
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