Intersections

Adventures out of a window, onto a fire escape and up a wall at a Brewers Hill non-brewery building.

Photo on left courtesy of Milwaukee Public Library, believed to have been taken in 1910. Photo on right courtesy of Mark Wahl, taken 104 years later in 2014. The Weisel building stands about as upright as its tipsy Water Street bar patrons. Just looking at Pourman’s Pub, it’s hard to not notice the structure is leaning. Its wood-pile foundations are breaking down below, and much like several Downtown Milwaukee structures, it continues to sink over time – see Bloomberg’s recent coverage of the ongoing issue. Step inside the pub and you automatically take in its old-world charm, though at the same time, you feel…

I’ve found the most buried-from-mind buildings while cursing my GPS and praying I didn’t turn up another one-way street. A few years ago, that happened with the Pabst brewery. Finding it was an accident. And once I did, I stood there gawking over this city of bricks, wanting learn more about this piece of Milwaukee history.  With the recent talk about  bringing back Pabst, I wanted even more to get inside these old buildings. Although the restoration efforts at the site are impressive, I wanted to see the dustiness that once was Pabst—the areas that are closed off because of safety and uncertainty. Those that leave you thinking “I could probably…

Photos by Mark Wahl Light peeks through windows in the Ward Memorial Hall, dimly noting the ornate architectural detail and reflecting off shattered glass on the floor. Milwaukee VA Medical Center public relations director, Gary Kunich, and project manager, Matthew Cryer, ascend toward the top level of the Ward Memorial Hall auditorium wearing hardhats. The stairs creak below them with each step. Fog dissipates from their breath as they speak. Continuing upstairs, they walk past different generations of seating – some iron, some wooden. Each harkens back to a different time and place in entertainment: vaudeville, silent film, color. The…

I sat in a covered bus stop at 2nd and Wells, not waiting for a bus but hiding from a brisk wind. My attention drifted across the street to a row of empty buildings. In one vacant structure sat a room filled floor-to-ceiling with boxes. The next was full of boarded-up windows of plywood. The Germania Building is a powerful-looking structure. The name is a nice fit. Designed by German architects Schnetzky and Liebert, it cost $300,000 to build it in 1896. (That’s about $8 million today.) It was home to the largest German-language publishing company in the country and…

Photo by Susan Robinson I call an Oklahoma oil boomtown home. Just south of Tulsa, my hometown has a few stop lights, a Walmart, Sonic and a handful of other small-town necessities. The streets are lined with old mansions and houses, lawns neatly kept. It’s a small town, a cute town at first glimpse. You see families having dinner at the diner, and you know everyone by name. The streets are flooded with church-goers on Sunday mornings; their chatter fills a normally quiet scene. Old brick buildings cast shadows over streets, reflecting its golden days of prosperity. All of these things…