Milwaukee was a distinctly low-rise city when this photograph was taken in 1935. City Hall, which topped out at 350 feet (minus its flagpole), was by far the tallest structure on the local skyline, and few commercial buildings contained more than a dozen stories.
The modest scale of Milwaukee’s Downtown made its railroad depots stand out with particular prominence. For most of the 20th century, train stations were the grand entrances to America’s cities, and Milwaukee had two beauties: the Milwaukee Road depot (pictured here) on Clybourn Street between Third and Fourth, and the Chicago & North Western terminal at the east end of Wisconsin Avenue.
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Completed in 1886, the Milwaukee Road station was the older of the pair by three years. Designed by Edward Townsend Mix in the era’s fashionable Romanesque style, the building’s red brick facade, steeply pitched gables and monumental clock tower made it a local icon for generations.
Automobiles began to overtake trains as the nation’s prime movers in the 1920s. Year by year, they gained ground on their fixed-rail rivals, and by the mid-1900s expressways were replacing railroad tracks as America’s main transportation arteries. Local freeway planners scored a nearly direct hit on the Milwaukee Road depot. They routed Interstate 794 directly over the station’s track network, forcing the railroad to build a new terminal on nearby St. Paul Avenue – a facility that, much remodeled, is now Milwaukee’s Intermodal Station.
In 1965, after the new structure opened, the original depot met the wrecking ball. It was replaced by nothing but a parking lot, a vacancy that persisted until 1986, when Wisconsin Electric Power (today’s We Energies) built an office annex on the site. The building’s clean, functional lines dimmed any lingering memories of ornate clock towers and red brick gables from the Age of Rail.
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK:
- The Milwaukee Road depot was designed for passenger traffic, and the Railway Express terminal on the left handled freight.
- The tip of City Hall’s tower peeked out from behind the Majestic Building.
- The Federal Building (left) and the Mitchell Building (right) are still prominent Downtown landmarks.
- The Public Service Building has been the nerve center of Wisconsin’s largest electric utility (now We Energies) since 1906.
- Pere Marquette Park (now Zeidler Union Square) was the depot’s front yard.
- Built in 1916, the Medford was one of several small Downtown hotels that became rooming houses before they were razed in the 1960s and later.
IN COLLABORATION WITH MILWAUKEE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
