Alterra’s coffee shop on Prospect was a transformative architectural event in
1997. Its owners weren’t the first to make an old building sing in Milwaukee.
But they were the first to make it sing their song.
They imagined a new place in the ruins of another. If they weren’t so
passionate about the approach, it could feel like a formula. Believe in the
character of the building, the virtue of handmade things. Don’t overpolish. Be a
little funky, bring out the grain and stains. Add – and leave – whatever
resonates. Don’t be afraid to be clunky, like Fred Flintstone.
I can’t think of another local brand that has made such a distinctive set of
buildings. The Foundry in the Fifth Ward renovated an industrial building and
even kept the old faded name (Kramer International) on the outside. Inside is a
pensive place to read Nietzsche, write a novel, ruminate in public. Alterra at
the Lake, especially in the summer, has a touristy, celebratory air. But it’s
not superficial. It’s still a flushing station for the Milwaukee River, after
all, a place where real work is done.
The original Alterra on Prospect, however, was simply magical, blending a
roasting facility, offices and the coffee shop in just the right proportions.
Counters faced out toward the street and also to the roasters in back. All the
layers overlapped – leisure and work, commerce and manual labor, the 19th and
20th centuries. The coffee shop was also the entrance to the company’s main
office. Loading and unloading, the industrial side of business, took place right
out front.
When it was busy, the coffee shop was a little awkward. People queued down
the middle, which often divided the shop in half. You had to navigate back and
forth through the line to get your lattes. People had to be aware of each other
and help out. We were all in this together.
The place just hummed. Every once in a while, the rattling of the roasting
machines broke through the din of music and conversation. How nice to be present
when they were actually making something. It was oddly satisfying that the shop
embodied the process that brought you its product. You were part of something
larger than your cup of coffee.
Recently, Alterra moved its bakery, roasting and management from Prospect
(where it retains that café) to a sparkling new mixed-use development. It was
designed by Kubala Washatko in collaboration with Alterra’s owners and their
in-house artisans, Joe and Janice Niedzialkowski. It’s big. It fills the entire
the entire 2900 block of North Humboldt.
It started out as a rehab of the Post Teledyne Building built in 1948. When
that didn’t work out, Alterra started from scratch. It was a daunting
proposition: to create its signature ambience without the patina of past lives
of an old place.
The new café echoes Prospect in many ways. There’s a counter with views into
the factory and out to the street. It’s filled with a variety of classic wood
chairs you might find in a Grant Wood painting. Tables are nearly 2-inch-thick
slabs of wood. There are no veneers. The ceiling is made of tongue-and-groove
Douglas fir decking. The sheet metal ventilation gleams.
The concrete floor is polished and subtly stained in two different hues of
aqua. Wood beams were reclaimed from a Kohl’s grocery store in Grafton and
lightly stained to bring out the grain. It’s another incarnation of Alterra’s
sturdy and honest aesthetic, embracing warm and rough industrial materials.
The south face spills into a luminous covered shed that overlooks a patio.
Native plants grow around the support beams. This alcove is defined by three
buildings and a brise soleil. The brick, corrugated steel, wood, concrete, rusty
I-beams and polycarbonate all play well together. The lines and rectangles are
well-proportioned. The patio has to be one of the most intimate places to look
at contemporary architecture in Milwaukee. It may be a little too
intense. Most seem to prefer the porch overlooking the patio. It’s cozy,
just where you want to be.
The complex is a unique accomplishment in Milwaukee. Most mixed-use
developments only pretend to be urban and heterogeneous, and as they get larger,
feel like a run-on sentence. Alterra’s effort is punctuated, broken down into
smartly defined parts. It feels differentiated because it actually is a row of
different buildings. Yet the disparate parts come together under one roof. It
doesn’t need to be branded with a big logo to feel unified.
So far so good. The only problem is the coffee shop itself. It’s nice. They
tried. But it’s not right. The factory view is enormous, which puts the cafe out
of balance with the building. To make matters worse, it’s flatly lighted with
cold fluorescents.
What a contrast to the original place on Prospect. It was a revelation that
an ancient factory could be a sublime vista. All those dark, almost brooding
tones, dappled by daylight filtered through cloudy skylights. It was sensuous
and romantic. Sorry, modern warehouse-manufacturing is vacuous and lonely. You
sit looking at a banal place you want to leave.
The new shop is also more efficient, which is a pity. Now, rather than
mingling and bumping into one another, customers stand lockstep in a lonesome
cafeteria line separated from the rest of the café by a bulky divider. The
vibrant staff, which is one of the pleasures of a coffee shop, is no longer part
of the mood of the place. It’s a commissary, not a place to mill about and
linger.
At Prospect, the line still meanders down the middle of the shop. I hope they
don’t change that. I met a whole new group of friends standing in line
eavesdropping and then debating their pronouncements. Then I’d be talking to
someone, only to see their gaze drift to a beautiful woman standing behind me.
Who would have thought an auto parts shop would become the best coffee shop
in town? Alterra on Prospect was a happy accident that cast a spell.
Alterra on Humboldt is a pleasant place. It would be nothing to complain
about if not for that first coffee shop. Maybe you can’t capture the random
eccentricities of the old in the new. And you can’t blame a business for being
well-organized. But it’s too easy to straighten a line. Convenience and
efficiency flatten experience. The problem with Humboldt is that everything is
on purpose.
Great cafes are a mystery. They just happen. Like a good conversation, they
let us wander to an unexpected destination. We talk of going to the coffee shop,
but what do we really seek? To drink coffee and be someplace at the same time.
Instead of going, we are arriving.
