SOMETIME AROUND 1960, Clare Monroe “Monnie” Hall strode across the steel skeleton of the Marine Plaza, high above the fascinating landscape of a Downtown Milwaukee on the cusp of change.
1.
Marine Plaza, along the Milwaukee River at Wisconsin Avenue and Water Street, was completed in 1961 and is now known as the Chase Tower. Historian Matthew Prigge notes it was “the first significant Downtown project since the early years of the Depression” and at 22 stories was the second-tallest building in Milwaukee upon opening, behind City Hall. It’s now 13th-tallest.
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2.
Hall was a tank commander a decade earlier in Korea, according to his son, Nate Hall, and his hard hat was emblazoned with insignia showing his rank of sergeant first class. He also was apparently a PBR man, and his beer of choice was still made in the sprawling Pabst complex marked by the smokestack just above the horizon at left.
3.
Names from Milwaukee’s past (and present, if you look carefully) abound here, but this sign belonged to one of the biggies: Gimbels. The department store on the river’s west bank is now a hotel and offices, historian John Gurda notes.
4.
In a sign of Downtown’s transition away from industry, two gritty smokestacks no longer sprout from the eastern foot of the Wells Street bridge. The power plant there would be rehabbed into the Milwaukee Rep’s Quadracci Powerhouse Theater, which opened in 1987.
5.
While the Milwaukee Auditorium of 1960 has since lost its white roof and its name (now Miller High Life Theatre), the arched profile of the MECCA (now UW-Milwaukee Panther Arena) remains unchanged.
