The Brewery District, Milwaukee

Posted on September 27, 2022 by admin

Our visit to Milwaukee on Sunday took us, in the mid-afternoon, to what it now is known as the Brewery District. Once upon a time — for a long time — Pabst was brewed there.

The sign hangs between some handsome buildings. On one side, the cream city brick Malt House, originally developed in 1882 and former one of the world’s largest brewery-owned malt houses, according to the district’s web site (who else would own a malt house?). Now it’s apartments.

On the other side, the Brewhouse Inn & Suites, a hotel that was once the brew house for the Pabst operations.

“The Pabst Brewery closed in 1996 leaving a seven-block area of downtown Milwaukee vacant,” the site says. “For over a decade, historic structures deteriorated until real estate developer and philanthropist Joseph J. Zilber purchased the site in August 2006.

“The results include seven apartment developments, three office buildings, two hotel properties, two breweries, restaurants, banquet halls and two public parks. In addition, the Brewery District is home to the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Joseph J. Zilber School of Public Health and No Studios, an incubator for the growing film industry in Milwaukee.”

Not that much of the district was open on Sunday. The spot participating in the Doors Open event was Best Place at the Historic Pabst Brewery, a retail complex formed from some of the old brewery buildings.

“Great care has been taken to ensure that Blue Ribbon Hall, The Great Hall, Captain’s Corner, Captain’s Courtyard, Guest Center, King’s Courtyard, and the original Gift Shop have all been restored to their original glory,” the separate Best Place web site says.

Enter one courtyard and there’s good old King Gambrinus.

Not actually that old, since it’s a 1967 reproduction, in aluminum, of an older wooden statue that had fallen apart.

In a separate courtyard, Frederick Pabst.

Died 1901. I saw his grave last year and his mansion some years before that. He was a beer baron among beer barons.

Doors Open Milwaukee ’22

Posted on September 26, 2022 by admin

My brother Jay is in town for a visit, and part of the visit included heading up to Milwaukee on Sunday for the Doors Open event.

Except for rain late in the afternoon, it was a fine cool day for gallivanting around, looking at buildings. First we went to the Basilica of St. Josaphat and then the Tripoli Shrine Temple, owned by the Shriners.

I decided to take a few detail shots at the temple, such as the top of a door handle, wall décor and a hanging bit of masonic symbolism.

Plus something to remember the guide by.

From there we sought lunch, which we found — takeout, so we had it in the car — from a place on Wisconsin Ave., east of Marquette U. Breakfast food for lunch.

Also on Wisconsin Ave., the main Milwaukee Public Library branch was part of the event, but unfortunately not on Sunday, so we didn’t get in. The sign shouldn’t have been left up.

Later in the afternoon, we spent time looking around the site of the former Pabst Brewery complex, now handsomely redeveloped, and capped things off with a visit to St. John’s Lutheran Church. The last two of those were new even to me. Though not that big, Milwaukee is dense with sights.

On the way home, we couldn’t very well pass up a short visit to Mars Cheese Castle.

The rain was done by then, leaving a rainbow over the Interstate.

Sculpture Milwaukee, 2019

Posted on September 18, 2022 by admin

Doors Open Milwaukee is next weekend, and I’m planning for it.

During the 2019 event, we happened across another public art event, one not confined to a particular weekend, but rather a particular year: Sculpture Milwaukee.

“Sculpture Milwaukee is a non-profit organization transforming downtown Milwaukee’s cultural landscape every year with an outdoor exhibition of world-renowned sculpture that serves as a catalyst for community engagement, economic development, and creative placemaking,” is how the organization’s web site puts it.

I don’t know about “community engagement” or “creative placemaking.” I would just say the org puts up different interesting sculptures to look at every year, but maybe that’s my editorial instinct for jettisoning publicist puffery coming into play.

Anyway, that year we saw works on E. Wisconsin Ave., including “Seraphine-cherubin” from “Teaching Staff for a School of Murderers” by Max Ernst (1967).

I’ve forgotten most of whatever I once knew about Dada, and had to look him up to make sure he wasn’t the one who peed on a pile of books in public. I don’t think he was. Who was that? I know I heard that story in college. I don’t think I want to feed verbiage along those lines into Google, however.

“Pensive” by Radcliffe Bailey.

The thinker depicted is W.E.B. Du Bois, according to the sign near the work.

One more: “Magical Thinking,” a work by Actual Sized Artworks (Gail Simpson and Aristotle Georgiades) (2019).

That sounded familiar. I have run across their art before, specifically in Evanston.That was in the early spring of 2010 on a short family outing.

Tempus fugit.

Around Lake Michigan Bits & Pieces

Posted on August 22, 2022 by admin

Here’s a set of facts that only I’m likely care about, but I find remarkable anyway.

My recent trip with friends to the UP and back began on July 30 and ended on August 7. Fifteen years earlier, in 2007, I took a trip with my immediate family to the UP and back, from July 30 to August 7. I didn’t know about the coincidence until I read a previous posting of mine. I wish I could say that I’d taken a July-30-to-August-7 trip 15 years before that, in 1992, but no: Singapore and Malaysia was June 29 to July 10 that year (I had to check.)

Both were counterclockwise around Lake Michigan, but such is the richness of worthwhile sights in that part of the country that the two trips touched only at one point: the Mackinac Bridge. And in the fact that we spent time in the UP.

Is it so different now than 15 years ago? Except for maybe better Internet connectivity (I hope so) and maybe a worse opioid problem (I hope not), not a lot seems to have changed.

The UP’s population in 2020, per the Census Bureau, was about 301,600, representing a decline from 311,300 in 2010 and 317,200 in 2000. Truth be told, however, the UP’s population has never been more than about 325,600, which it was in 1910. After a swelling in population in the 19th century, especially after the Civil War, numbers have held fairly steady, meaning an increasingly smaller percentage of Michiganders and Americans, for that matter, live in the UP.

A spiffy public domain map.

Of course, the trip started in metro Chicago, and our first destination was BAPS Shri Swaminarayan Mandir Chicago in Bartlett, Illinois. A striking piece of India within short driving distance of home, I once said, and I’m pretty sure my friends agreed with that assessment.

Next: Indiana Dunes National Park. I had in mind we’d walk along a trail I knew, and a beach I liked, but no parking was to be had on a Saturday in summer. We were able to stop at the the Century of Progress Architectural District for a few minutes, and amble down to the beach for a few more from there. They liked that, too, and I’m sure had never heard of that corner of Indiana.

Across the line in Michigan, we went to Redamak’s in New Buffalo. Crowded, but it was then that we collectively decided, though it was unspoken, that good food in a restaurant setting was worth the risk of the BA.5 variant. I’m glad to report that none of us had any Covid-like symptoms during the entire run of the trip.

Those were my first-day suggestions. Now my friends had one: Saugatuck, Michigan, which is actually two small towns, the other being named Douglas. I’d seen it on maps, but that was the extent of my awareness. Turns out it’s a popular place on a summer Saturday, too. Especially on the main streets.

Once we found parking, the place got a lot more pleasant. We wandered around, looking at a few shops and buying ice cream for a short sit down.

A small selection of Saugatuck businesses vying for those visitor dollars (no special order): Uncommon Coffee Roasters, Glik’s clothing store, Kilwin’s Chocolate, Sand Bar Saloon, Country Store Antiques, Bella Vita Spa + Suites, Tree of Life Juice, the Owl House (“gifts for the wise and the whimsical”), LUXE Saugatuck, Santa Fe Trading Co., Marie’s Green Apothecary (“all things plant made”), Mother Moon book store, and Amazwi Contemporary Art, just to list only a fraction of the businesses.

Not a lot of neon, but there was this.

I liked the little public garden. Rose Garden, at least according to Google Maps.

And its sculpture, “Cyclists,” by William Tye (2003).

At the Frederik Meijer Park & Sculpture Garden, we encountered a flock of what looked like wild turkeys.

The marina at Mackinaw City, from which boats to Mackinac Island depart, and a highly visible structure nearby.

You can be sure that we spent that afternoon on Mackinac Island.

Besides the Mackinac Island Ramble (that’s what I’m calling our walk there), we took a number of other good walks on the trip.

One was at the 390-acre Offield Family Working Forest Reserve, near Harbor Springs, Michigan. Its excellent wayfinding — clear and immediately useful signs and maps — helped us through its mildly labyrinthine paths that curve through a lush forest with no major water features, including parts that had clearly been used as a pine plantation.

Clouds threatened rain but only produced mist in the cool air. Wildflowers might have been a little past peak, but there was a profusion, and a rainy spring and early summer put them in robust clusters of red and blue and gold and white, near and far from our path. Everywhere a damp forest scent, wonderful and off-putting at the same time.

On August 5, our last full day in the UP, we had lunch in the small town of Grand Marais, on the shores of Lake Superior. As tourist towns go, it’s minor league, but all the more pleasant for it. The extent of souvenir stands at the main crossroads was a single enclosed booth, staffed by a young college woman who was maybe a relative of the owner. The selection of postcards was limited, but I got a few.

Right there on the main street of Grand Marais is the Pickle Barrel House. You can’t miss it. We didn’t.

Afterward, we found our way to the eastern reaches of Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, since the town is considered the eastern gateway to the lakeshore. That end of the lakeshore doesn’t have the pictured rocks, but there’s a lot else.

One trail on lakeshore land took us down to a beach on the south shore of Lake Superior. Sabel Beach, by name. You climb down a couple of hundred stairs to get there, but see the vigorous Sable Falls on the way. The way wasn’t empty, but not nearly the mob city on the southern shore of Lake Michigan or the waterfront at Mackinac Island.

Another lakeshore trail took us along Sable Dunes, which only involved a modest amount of climbing — not nearly as much as the Dune Climb at Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore — though sometimes the path underfoot was sand without vegetation. On the whole, the dunes support a full collection of the sort of hardy yellow-green grasses and bushes and gnarled trees you see near a beach. For human hikers, the dunes eventually provide a more elevated vista of the lake, which reminded me of the look over Green Bay last year.

We spent two nights in Newberry, Michigan. Still no more signs of møøse than the last time I was there. I did have the opportunity to take a short walk around town. This is the Luce County Historical Museum (closed at that moment), which was once the county jail and sheriff’s residence. It’s complete with a time capsule on the grounds for the Newberry centennial in 1982. Planned re-opening: 2082. That’s optimism.

A few other nearby buildings.

Saint Gregory’s Catholic Church.

We encountered rain much of the last day of the trip, August 7, so mostly it was a drive from our lakeside rental near Green Bay (the water feature) in Wisconsin home to the northwest suburbs. We didn’t stop in Milwaukee, though we buzzed through downtown on I-94, which offers a closeup of the skyline.

We did stop at Mars Cheese Castle before we left Wisconsin. How could we not do that?

Around Lake Michigan ’22

Posted on August 8, 2022 by admin

A little more than a week ago, I took a pretty good picture of three dear friends, two of whom I’ve known for over 45 years. From left to right, Tom, Catherine and Jae.

We were on the second day of our drive around Lake Michigan, counterclockwise, which took us from metro Chicago through northern Indiana, Grand Rapids and parts of western Michigan, Petoskey and environs, Mackinac Island, both Sault Ste. Maries, parts of the eastern Upper Peninsula, greater Green Bay and other parts of eastern Wisconsin, and back to metro Chicago.

Leaving on July 30 from our starting point at my house, we drove my car on crowded and less crowded Interstates, state and county highways, and a host of smaller roads, including National Forest roads cutting through lush boreal territory. Returning yesterday to my house, my friends flew back to Austin today; they had arrived from Austin two days ahead of the trip.

We’d planned the trip via email and Zoom, beginning back in early spring. I was the informal guide, making suggestions and offering bits of information I knew from previous visits to Michigan, upper and lower. But my friends were hardly passive in the course of our travels, digging up information via cell and making their own suggestions based on their own familiarity with some of the territory. Catherine had overseen arranging our accommodations, and everybody drove at one time or another.

We stayed in five different peer-to-peer rental accommodations along way, all entire houses that could provide us enough bedrooms, bathrooms, food prep and dining areas, and, in most cases, space to sit outdoors, once with a view of the waters of Green Bay.

Enjoying the outdoors was one of the main goals of the trip. For me, certainly, but especially for them, escaping the high heat of central Texas. They often remarked on the cool air and reveled in it, checking periodically to learn the temps at home. Three digits in Austin wasn’t usual. I don’t think got higher than 85 F. where we were. Standard night temps in both Michigans generally came in the 60s F.

Two meals a day was the norm: a mid- to late-morning breakfast and a late afternoon dinner, or a very late breakfast and a late dinner, at least as these things are reckoned in North America. So on many days, our meal schedule was more like that of Mexico City.

Food variety has trickled down to the lakeside and inland burgs of the upper Upper Midwest, though perhaps not quite as much as in large metros. Whitefish, the star of a lot of UP menus, had top billing in some of our meals, but we also enjoyed hamburgers and other meat — including one tasty UP pasty — pizza, pasta, breakfast fare, bar food, Italian and Asian, plus chocolates and fruit, such as Michigan cherries and UP jam. We prepared our own meals sometimes, did takeout a few times.

Coffee by morning, wine by night, though I only participated in the latter. Familiar wines were available in every grocery store we visited, and my friends sought out coffee ground as locally as possible: one bag from Sault Ste. Marie, for instance.

Meals and wine drinking were a source of convivial times, but hardly the only one. We talked and conversed and bantered at the table, as we headed along roads and as we walked trails. Shared personal histories were revisited, stories of our long periods apart were relayed, and opinions shared. Odd facts were floated. There was punnery, especially on the part of Tom, a born punster.

We visited one city of any size, Grand Rapids, and many smaller places, a few museums, a sculpture garden, some riverfronts, shopping streets and resort areas, a grand hotel, an historic fort, churches, a Hindu temple, a wooded cemetery, two lighthouses, forests, clearings and beaches, a massive sand dune, waterfalls, rapids and the clearest pond I’ve ever seen. The three Great Lakes we saw stretched to empty horizons — except when Canada or the opposite shore of Green Bay were visible. We crossed the Mackinac Bridge once and the international bridge between the Sault Ste Maries twice.

We walked near the shores of Lakes Superior, Huron and Michigan. The northern woods and the beach ecosystems were fully flush here in late summer. Jae, who knows a good deal about flora, shared some knowledge about the flowers, trees and fungi we saw in profusion.

Though we caught a few showers in daytime, and the last day was mostly rainy, most of the storms rumbled through at night, adding to the restfulness of whatever sleep we each had. None of the storms were lightning-and-thunder dramas, but some were impressive in their downpour. My friends expressed their satisfaction with the cool light winds that often blow in corners of the UP.

There were a number of travel firsts, mostly for my friends. This was the first time any of them had been to the UP, and the first time they had seen Lake Superior, whose aspect I’m so fond of, and their first visit to the northern part of the Lower Peninsula. The trip included Tom’s first known visit to a national park, though later we determined that it was probably his second park. Also, it was the first time two of them had ever been to Canada, since we popped across the border for one night in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.

For me, a mix of new and places I saw long enough ago that they were almost like new.

When I dropped off my friends at O’Hare earlier today, we agreed that they trip had met expectations. And more.

Apron Replacement

Posted on July 25, 2022 by admin

Not long ago, the village sent me a note — a low-tech, paper note, stuck in the door — that soon my “apron” would be replaced. It took me a moment to figure out that meant the section of my driveway that’s between the street and the sidewalk. Turns out the village meant not only that, but the sidewalk next to it as well.

Technically, the apron isn’t part of my driveway, since the it’s beyond my lot line. But I use it all the time as if I owned it because it leads to my driveway. The advantage to it belonging to the village is, of course, no fee for the replacement above the taxes I already pay.

We had time to move the cars to the street where, we were assured, they wouldn’t be ticketed for overnight parking. And they haven’t been. Soon workmen and big machines came along.

Wooden boards were erected to contain the concrete in its liquid-ish moments.

Pouring concrete.

I don’t have an image of the finished apron and sidewalk, but it’s a bright white hard surface. I didn’t sign my name or initials on it, or let the dog paw it. Also, there’s no imprint by the contractor, or a date, as you see elsewhere sometimes — and for a long time.

Such as the sidewalk in Milwaukee’s Walker’s Point neighborhood earlier this month.

Not the contractor, but the city’s imprint. It was an old slab of concrete, but it’s held up fairly well for more than 80 years in the chilly Wisconsin climate. Will my new apron hold up so long? Till the turn of the 22nd century?

Three More Walker’s Point Churches

Posted on July 21, 2022 by admin

Despite Sunday’s walking tour being exterior only, we were able to go inside three churches that day. One of them, Parroquia de Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe, wasn’t actually on the tour.

It was, however, about a block from where we parked the car for lunch, and after eating we had a few extra minutes for a look. Mass was about to start.

One church I mentioned yesterday, Iglesia Apostolica, happened to be open when we passed by on the tour, because the service had just ended. We asked whether we could take a look, and one of the men at the door — he might have been the pastor, or not — told us we could come in, absolutely. So we did, about a dozen of us. Though a church building for many years, the interior was spare, almost wholly unadorned.

Then again, a church is its congregation, and in those terms the place was well adorned. The church was still full of people, all socializing, entirely in Spanish. All ages were represented. It was a living example of U.S. Hispanic Protestantism, which is in a growth mode — as were some other churches on the tour.

A little while later, as we passed St. Mary’s Ukrainian Orthodox Church, which curiously placed in the middle of the block rather than on a corner, a woman at the door invited us in. I believe she was a friend of the guide.

It was originally a Lutheran church, and originally in a different location.

Note the scaffolding, buckets and fans. A few weeks earlier, as the roof was being replaced, wind blew off the tarp keeping the rain out — when no one was around, apparently. In came water, and much damage resulted.

Does insurance consider that an Act of God? I doubt the parishioners do — more like an act of carelessness on the part of the tarp hangers.

Walking By Walker’s Point Churches

Posted on July 20, 2022 by admin

The walking tour we took Sunday was to look at churches in the Walker’s Point neighborhood of Milwaukee. When I signed up for it, I imagined we’d walk around and go inside a handful of churches, as we’ve done on the tours we’ve taken in Chicago.

But no. As I looked at the list of churches handed out by our guide, I thought — we’re going into all of these? Nine churches were on the list. Then it dawned on me that we’d be walking past all of them and not seeing their interiors.

That was a little disappointing. Still, despite the steamy heat of the afternoon, our church walkabout had its charms, including Parroquia de San Patricio (St. Patrick’s Parish), completed in 1895.

St. Peter Evangelical Lutheran Church, dating from 1885.

A structure that’s now Iglesia Apostolica, but when the church was built in 1894, it was Vorfreslsers Norski Evangelical Lutheran Kirke. The only surviving Norwegian-style church in the city, the guide said, and then offered some architectural details about what made that so. I can’t remember a single one.

The charming little St. Michail Ukrainian Catholic Church, built as a Lutheran church in 1894.

The former St. Wenceslas, first built in 1883. Now it’s St. Ann Chapel, and part of a Catholic school. The entrance dates from 1914 and, for all its age, still looks tacked on to me.

The Iglesia Evangelica Bautista, originally dating from 1900 as a Norwegian Evangelical Free Church.

All that only goes to show that even in matters of religious sites, time flies, things change.

Walker’s Point, Milwaukee

Posted on July 19, 2022 by admin

Over the weekend, we came across a sign for a really full-service vehicle repair shop.

Higley Motor Co. happens to be in the Walker’s Point neighborhood of Milwaukee, and we happened to wander by the sign, and I happened to read it. Read random things and sometimes you’ll be rewarded with a smile.

On Sunday, we popped off north at about 9 a.m., planning to take a Historic Milwaukee walking tour in the Walker’s Point neighborhood at 1 p.m. Extra time was built in, so we could visit the area on our own for a while, and have lunch.

Walker’s Point is south of downtown Milwaukee, and sliced in half by I-94. As Milwaukee neighborhoods go, it’s an old one. The oldest one in fact, according to the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee. A 19th-century landowner, George Walker, lent the area his name. Immigrants have lived there pretty much since day one — one influx after (and upon) another. These days it’s heavily Hispanic.

Old the neighborhood may be, but there’s also evidence of redevelopment in our time, such as this (I assume) apartment building under way.

Other buildings have been subject to major modification.

Or may be soon.

Soon we dropped by Zócalo Food Truck Park.

“A range of diverse indoor and outdoor gathering places are woven throughout the project,” says The Kubala Washatko Architects, who designed the park, which was completed in 2019.

“The team repurposed an existing two-story structure into a tavern, serving as Zocalo’s social heart. Food trucks are positioned to create room-like spaces while a garage was converted to covered dining and private event space. Overhead lights, shading devices, game area, and vibrant mural walls create dynamic exterior social zones.”

A number of options awaited us.

We picked Anytime Arepa.

As the name says, you can get the northern South American cornmeal sandwich arepa at that truck. Empanadas, too. We had one of each. They both hit the spot. The same spot, namely that we were looking for a good lunch, which we ate under one of the “shading devices” mentioned by the architect (a tarp over some tables).

Two More Milwaukee Churches

Posted on September 30, 2021 by admin

Royal road to the unconscious, eh? Last night a pleasant elderly couple appeared in a dream: “Mr. and Mrs. Folger.” He didn’t look like anyone I knew, but she looked like Virginia Christine. I know, of course, that wasn’t her name in the commercials, but tell it to the unconscious.

The last two Doors Open places we visited in Milwaukee on Saturday were churches, not far from the cluster of churches we saw in 2017 along or near Juneau St. One this time was St. Paul’s Episcopal Church.

A Richardsonian Romanesque design by the busy Victorian architect Edward Townsend Mix, completed in 1884 for the oldest Episcopal parish in Milwaukee. No Cream City brick this time, but rather another Wisconsin material: red Lake Superior Sandstone, found near the Apostle Islands, and (I think) similar to Jacobsville Sandstone up in the UP.

The church is known for its Tiffany windows, one of which is reportedly the largest opalescent glass window the studios of Louis Comfort Tiffany ever made, at 22 feet x 28 feet. That would be “Christ Leaving the Praetorium.” My pictures didn’t turn out so well, but fortunately there’s a public domain image available.

A few blocks away is St. Rita Catholic Church. Its current iteration didn’t exist when we were nearby in 2017. The church was completed only last year.

“St. Rita Church at 1601 N. Cass St. began in 1933 as a mission outpost of the old Italian parish, the Blessed Virgin of Pompeii Church in Milwaukee’s Third Ward,” the Three Holy Women Parish web site says. “Its basement church was blessed as a new independent parish in 1937, then a building was erected and blessed in 1939… In 2018, the church was demolished with plans to build St. Rita Square, a six-story senior housing campus operated by Capri Senior Communities, along with a new St. Rita Church.”

Some elements of the new church were part of the old St. Rita, and a few were even part of the Blessed Virgin of Pompeii, which was razed in 1967 for highway construction.

“One of those artifacts, an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Gabriel, is already visible to passersby,” Urban Milwaukee reported in early 2020. “Sculpted in 1904, the year the pink church [Blessed Virgin of Pompeii] was constructed, it had been on the top of St. Rita since 1969. It now rests atop its third church.”

St. Rita has an inviting but relatively spare interior.

The church also has some nice stained glass.

I didn’t know much about the saint. Anything, actually. She’s Rita of Cascia (1381-1457).

Now I know a little more, such as she’s the patron of abused spouses and difficult marriages, among many other awful situations.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Category Archives: US: Wisconsin