Category Archives: US: Wisconsin

Postcards To Ed

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It’s been almost four years since my old friend Ed passed. His bequest to me was many postcards, including some of those that I’d sent to him over the years. I spent some time looking at them the other day. Odd to see something you dashed off, never expecting to see it again.

A selection.

June 16, 2008

Dear Ed,
Welcome back from Mongolia, etc. I’m expecting a letter. You will soon receive cards from Tennessee or NC or maybe even SC.

Dees

***

June 25, 2009

Dear Ed,
From the last batch of cards I bought. I didn’t expect a planetarium at LBL [Land Between the Lakes]. The show wasn’t all that interesting, however.

Dees

***

Sept. 22, 2010

Dear Ed,
Now this was worth driving to Milwaukee to see: a piece of the 1893 world’s fair. If only I had that time machine —

Dees

***

April 26, 2011

Dear Ed,
Bet it’s been a while since you’ve rec’d a stretch postcard — the gift shop at this museum was practically giving them away, so I got several. I have to like a museum that’s still proud of its dioramas. Until holodecks come along, they will have to do.

Dees

***

April 6, 2012

Dear Ed,
I’ve been remiss is sending cards lately, so here’s one from Yerkes. In case you don’t have enough pictures of Einstein. Nice pics of Africa, by the way [that he sent me].

Dees

The Midsummer Carnival Shaft

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Time for an autumn break. Back to posting around October 20, if all goes according to plan.

Last week in Milwaukee, I happened across an oddity that wasn’t part of the Doors Open event, but rather something in the median of Wisconsin Ave. near Calvary Presbyterian.

Court of Honor Milwaukee

A tall, freestanding Corinthian column with a sphere on top. Other statues in the median, not pictured here, include ones honoring Union soldiers, Spanish-American veterans and George Washington. So this column must honor something along those lines, right?

Hard to tell just looking at it. A plaque on the plinth is enigmatic: Presented to the City of Milwaukee by the Carnival Association, June 26, 1900.

Who? Why? Later, I found an article about the Court of Honor, as the median is called. “The Court of Honor is a series of statues, most honoring military figures, that line the median strip in West Wisconsin Avenue between 9th and 10th Streets,” Bobby Tanzilo wrote in On Milwaukee.

“The collection of sculpture became known as the Court of Honor because it was the site of the annual crowning of the Rex (or king) of the Milwaukee Midsummer Carnival Festival, which began in 1898 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Wisconsin’s birth as a state.

“The carnival only endured for four years, but it must have been a fun event, because it drew visitors from across the state… Each year, for the carnival, the association that organized the week-long event would build temporary classical wood and plaster colonnades. Two years in, it commissioned architect Alfred Clas to design a Corinthian column – the Midsummer Carnival Shaft – that would be constructed of Bedford limestone to serve as a permanent centerpiece for the event.”

The Midsummer Carnival Shaft thus stands to this day, silently honoring an event that probably 99.44% of Milwaukeeans could not identify. Just another example of something that can make the urban texture of a city interesting — a forgotten oddity in plain sight.

Two Milwaukee Courthouses of Imposing Size and Grandeur

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Last year during Doors Open Milwaukee, we passed by the Milwaukee County Courthouse. I don’t think it was participating, but anyway we didn’t go in. Naturally, this year it’s still an imposing neo-classical edifice by McKim, Mead, and White, finished in 1931.

Milwaukee County CourthouseThe building was open and we went in. But not at the owl entrance, whose single word Justice, if you’re in a cynical mood, might fall under the category of promises, promises.
Milwaukee County CourthouseSome of the courthouse’s arched hallways were well lit.
Milwaukee County CourthouseOthers, not so much.
Milwaukee County CourthouseOne well-appointed courtroom, that of Judge Someone-or-Other, was open for inspection.
Milwaukee County CourthouseMostly the halls and courtroom exuded a sense of serious business, which is appropriate. Don’t want any goofballs on the bench. But there was at least one oddity in the otherwise staid atmosphere of the courthouse halls: a weight and horoscope machine. What?
Milwaukee County CourthouseFurther to the east on Wisconsin Ave. — there’s that street again — is the Federal Building & U.S. Courthouse for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. They say it’s a grand old edifice, completed in the 1890s to house not only federal courts, but also the main post office and the customs service. I’m sure it must be, but the exterior is a little hard to see in 2019 during restoration.
Federal Courthouse MilwaukeeSome of the granite facade is visible.
Federal Courthouse MilwaukeeA design overseen by Willoughby J. Edbrooke, whose Wiki page tell us: “[He] remained faithful to a Richardsonian Romanesque style into the era of Beaux-Arts architecture in the United States.” A man who knew what he liked and stuck with it.

The vaulting atrium impresses mightily, but it’s hard to capture its image with a simple camera. Looking up, the view is through a steel structure which I assume is for support in some way.
Federal Courthouse MilwaukeeThese are views from the fourth floor. Originally the atrium roof was open, in the way pre-air conditioning buildings often were.
Federal Courthouse MilwaukeeFederal Courthouse MilwaukeeWe saw two courtrooms, including the Ceremonial Courtroom and its exceptional woodwork.
Federal Courthouse MilwaukeeFederal Courthouse MilwaukeeFederal Courthouse MilwaukeeCalled “ceremonial” because besides being a workaday federal courtroom, it’s also where new judges and new U.S. citizens tend to be sworn in.

An Eastern Church With Pews, A Western Church Without

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Buildings, including churches, defy expectations at times. Often enough that expectations really shouldn’t be expected, but we do that anyway.

Take St. George Melkite Greek Catholic Church, which we visited on Saturday as part of Doors Open Milwaukee. It was built in 1917.
St. George Melkite Greek Catholic Church, MilwaukeeThough the Melkites are in communion with Rome, I was expecting an Eastern-style church inside. Mostly, it is, with icons and an iconostasis and Christ on the ceiling. But it also includes pews.
St. George Melkite Greek Catholic Church, MilwaukeeOne of the congregation was on hand to tell us about the church, and his idea was that the pews were a bit of syncretism on the part of the Lebanese and Syrian founding families of the church, or maybe the architect, one Erhard Brielmaier. Also, the church didn’t have icons in its early days, those being added in more recent decades, which might explain why their language is English.
St. George Melkite Greek Catholic Church, MilwaukeeSt. George Melkite Greek Catholic Church, MilwaukeeChrist on the ceiling is a particular admirable work.
St. George Melkite Greek Catholic Church, MilwaukeeI was astonished to learn that it isn’t a painting, which it very much looks like, but a printed image made using a highly sophisticated machine and fixed in place.

Back on Wisconsin Ave. (for St. George is a few blocks to the north), we visited one more church on Saturday: Calvary Presbyterian, a soaring Victorian Gothic structure dating from the early 1870s, designed by architects Koch & Hess.

Calvary Presbyterian MilwaukeeThat was a long time before the highway, unfortunately next to the church, was built.
Calvary Presbyterian MilwaukeeNickname: the Big Red Church.
Calvary Presbyterian MilwaukeeInside, I was surprised again.
Calvary Presbyterian Milwaukee“Not what you expected, is it?” said one of the congregation. He explained that with pews, the church would be used once a week for a few hours — unsustainable for a small membership. Twenty years ago, they decided to remove the pews. When the congregation meets now, it’s on temporary chairs under a multi-petal canopy. Other groups also meet for other purposes in the now-open space, making the place an active one.

The Tripoli Shrine Temple

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Last night at around 11, or just an hour before September ended, I sat on my deck outside in short sleeves, in comfort. Warm winds blew. The day had been summer-like, in the mid-80s at least, and October 1 has been roughly the same. Rain is coming tonight, though, and so are cooler temps.

I don’t have any interest in becoming a Shriner, but I have to like a fraternal organization whose members wear fezzes and meet in gilded, onion-domed buildings inspired by the 19th-century popular vogue for Orientalism. I’ve seen Shriners in their little cars buzzing along parade routes, and once upon a time I went to a Shrine Circus in a temple that the Shriners later sold, and which has been sold again.

In Milwaukee, on Wisconsin Ave., the Shriners built themselves an exceptional edifice, the Tripoli Shrine Temple, taking inspiration from the Taj Mahal.
Tripoli Shrine TempleNo example of Moorish Revival is complete without stone camels, I think. Especially considering that the Shriners originally called themselves the Ancient Arabic Order of the Nobles of the Mystic Shrine. Two camels are perched beside the front entrance steps.

Tripoli Shrine TempleThe statue to the right of Shriner and child is a nod to the Shriners Hospitals for Children, of which there are 22 in North America (though none in Milwaukee).
Tripoli Shrine TempleThe temple, designed by Clas & Shepard of Milwaukee and completed in 1928, is every bit as ornate inside as out.
Tripoli Shrine TempleSecond floor.
Tripoli Shrine TempleLooking up.
Tripoli Shrine TempleThere was no shortage of Shriners around, helping show off the place.
Tripoli Shrine TempleThis one gave a short talk about the building. He had interesting things to say, especially about the countless thousands of tiles on the floors and wall. Literally countless, since no one kept count or has made a count. He said that during the interior construction of the temple in the late ’20s, a family of four skilled in tilework lived in the temple, staying until they were done a few years later.

Three Wisconsin Avenue Lutheran Churches & One Beer Palace

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We kicked off our time on Wisconsin Ave. in Milwaukee on Saturday at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, which has been on this site since 1917, though the congregation has been around since 1841, before there was a Milwaukee or even a state of Wisconsin.
St Paul's Lutheran MilwaukeeGeorge Bowman Ferry designed the structure. It must have been one of his last, since he died in 1918. In partnership with another Milwaukee architect, Alfred C. Clas, he’s better known for doing the Pabst Mansion, which isn’t far to the east of St. Paul’s.St Paul's Lutheran Milwaukee St Paul's Lutheran MilwaukeeJust a few blocks from St. Paul’s — 2812 W. Wisconsin vs. 3022 W. Wisconsin — is another Lutheran congregation, which meets at Our Savior’s Lutheran Church. I gazed at the structure for a while before I noticed the solar panels. It probably took so long because that’s still an unexpected feature in ecclesiastical architecture.Our Saviors Lutheran Church, MilwaukeeOur Saviors Lutheran Church, Milwaukee

Why so close to another Lutheran church? I don’t have a definite answer. They both seem to be part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, but that’s a fairly recent combination, so perhaps they were different kinds of Lutherans in the early days. Also possible: Our Savior’s was founded by Norwegians, who maybe didn’t want to share a church with Germans or others in the 19th century.

The church is tall and the interior walls are spare.Our Savior Lutheran MilwaukeeOur Savior Lutheran MilwaukeeA reflection of its midcentury design, I believe, since the building was completed only in 1954 for a much older congregation. A detail I find interesting from the church web site, after mentioning the 1951 groundbreaking and 1952 cornerstone laying: “Work slowed in 1951-1953 due to the steel shortage caused by the Korean conflict.”

Also: “The original architect, H.C. Haeuser, passed away in 1951 before work on the church could begin. The firm of Grassold and Johnson was hired to replace him and that firm finalized the design.”

The walls may be mostly plain, but the stained glass isn’t.
Our Savior Lutheran Milwaukee“The stained glass windows were designed by Karl Friedlemeier, a native of Munich, Germany and manufactured by Gavin Glass and Mirror Company of Milwaukee from imported antique glass,” the church says. “Upper windows on the west wall depict Old Testament stories; New Testament stories are shown on the upper east walls.”

To east of these two Lutheran churches, again not far (1905 W. Wisconsin Ave.), is another church of that denomination, Reedemer Lutheran Church. It too is ELCA.
Redeemer Lutheran Church MilwaukeeA fine brick Gothic structure completed in 1915, designed by William Schuchardt, who worked at Ferry & Clas early in this career.
Redeemer Lutheran Church MilwaukeeRedeemer Lutheran Church MilwaukeeWhile on the way to Reedemer, we passed by the Pabst Mansion.
Pabst Mansion MilwaukeeLooks as palatial as it did in 2010. No reason it shouldn’t. It wasn’t part of Doors Open and so not open at no charge for the weekend. We walked by.

Across the street, an event called Beer Baron’s Bash was going on in the mansion’s parking lot, featuring food trucks and booths serving beer. Interesting, but not what we had come for either, so we walked by that too.

Milwaukee Doors Open ’19

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Large amounts of rain fell on northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin on Friday, and more again on Sunday morning. In between, Saturday turned out to be a brilliant early fall day, clear and cool but not cold, and with touches of brown and gold on the still-green trees.

Milwaukee Doors OpenA good day to go to the latest Milwaukee Doors Open, driving up in mid-morning and returning just after dark.

This year — see 2017 and 2018 — we spent most of our time along or near Wisconsin Ave., a major east-west thoroughfare from the edge of Lake Michigan, just in front of the Milwaukee Art Museum, to near the Milwaukee County Zoo in the western reaches of the county.

At 2812 W. Wisconsin Ave. is St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, our first stop along the avenue, west of downtown and not too far from Marquette University. A few blocks to the west of that church is a vastly ornate Moorish Revival structure, the Tripoli Shrine Temple. “Is this a mosque?” Yuriko asked. No. “A church?” Well, no. It’s the Shriners.

Next to the temple — on an adjoining lot — is Our Savior’s Lutheran Church. From there, we headed a bit to the north, off Wisconsin Ave. but not far, to see the splendid Gilded Age Schuster Mansion, now a bed and breakfast.

Returning to Wisconsin Ave., we visited the Ambassador Hotel, whose handsome lobby is as Deco a design as any I’ve ever seen, and then went to the third and fourth (but not last) churches of the day: Redeemer Lutheran Church and, after lunch at a Malaysian Chinese storefront on the avenue, St. George Melkite Greek Catholic Church.

The end of the day found us closer to downtown Milwaukee, where we visited one more church on Wisconsin Ave., Calvary Presbyterian, with its surprising interior, and then we saw the inside of two massive edifices of the state: the Milwaukee County Courthouse and the Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, the latter also on Wisconsin Ave.

The only Milwaukee building we visited this year not on or near Wisconsin Ave. was about five miles to the south, and the first place we saw in the morning, because it isn’t far from I-94, the highway into Milwaukee from the south.

Namely, Lake Tower.
Lake Water Tower, MilwaukeeAlso called the Lake Water Tower, or the Anderson Municipal Building. It goes back to the Federal Works Agency, completed with a worn plaque just inside the entrance, dated 1938-39.
Lake Water Tower, MilwaukeeDon’t see Federal Works Agency plaques too often, but I’ve run across them occasionally.

At the time, this part of Milwaukee was an independent municipality: the Town of Lake. In fact, Lake, Wisconsin lasted from 1838 to 1954, when Milwaukee was able to annex it. In the late 1930s, the Town of Lake had municipal offices on the lower floors, and a million-gallon tank of water up top.

There are still municipal offices in the building, albeit Milwaukee’s, but the water tank has been empty for nearly 40 years, its function made unnecessary by new facilities, including the water reclamation plant in the vicinity, whose distinct odor pervaded the area around the tower. Milwaukee Doors Open visitors can go to the fourth floor of the tower, through a heavy door and into the dry bottom of the tank, with a view of the metalwork and convex roof (or is it concave? never can remember) and other features above (see these pictures).

The place had a nice echo. I asked the person on duty at the site — a tedious assignment, up there in the tank — whether small acoustic concerts were ever held there. No, afraid not. Something about the ADA, but I think it’s really a lack of municipal imagination.

Aztalan State Park

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After tooling around Lake Mills, Wisconsin, for a few hours, we got around to the original reason for driving up to southern Wisconsin for the day, a visit to Aztalan State Park. The park is a few miles east of the town, occupying 172 acres near the banks of the Crawfish River.

It’s a small version of Cahokia in Illinois, near modern-day St. Louis. The comparison isn’t idle, since both settlements were created and occupied by Middle Mississippian Indians more than 1,000 years ago.

Like Cahokia, Aztalan features manmade mounds and a rich archaeological legacy, despite 19th-century depredations. The Indians at Aztalan similarly and mysteriously abandoned it like those at Cahokia, centuries before the coming of Europeans.

The name is a misnomer in the sense that in the 19th century, one of the ideas about the prehistoric people who lived here saw them as ancestors of the Aztecs. The ancestors of the Aztecs were thought to be from a place north of Mexico called Aztalan. So the name was applied to the site, even though the Mississippians are no longer believed to be Aztec ancestors.

Then again, what the people who lived here actually called their settlement is unknown. I’d speculate that it was some variation of Our Place or This Here Place in their language, but who knows. Aztalan is as good a name as any in our time.

But why did they settle in the future Wisconsin? The Milwaukee Public Museum posits: “Things such as copper, lead (for white paint), deer, and certain types of stone materials such as Hixton Silicified Sandstone, were the basis of Mississippian trade interests in the northern frontier, and may have influenced the location of Aztalan as a Mississippian outpost in Wisconsin. Trade and other social and political processes expanded Cahokian influence out into much of the Midwest, as well as eastern and southeastern North America.”

Aztalan State Park sports tall grass, mounds and stockade posts, with mowed paths connecting different areas.
The stockade posts are 20th-century reconstructions, but I understand they were placed in the original holes.
One of the mounds. The second largest one, I think.

The path to the largest of the mounds. Large and small are relative terms for the mounds at Aztalan. Compared with Cahokia, they’re all pretty small.

Another path leads down to the Crawfish River, which I assume supplied Aztalan with its water and some fish.
Near the river is what I take to be an active archaeological dig, complete with screens for sifting the soil.
I don’t think I’d have the patience for that kind of work. But I’m glad there are people who do.

Glacial Drumlin State Trail

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I might have heard the term drumlin before, but if so I didn’t remember what it meant. On June 2, after lunch and looking around Lake Mills, Wisconsin, for a while, we took a walk on the Glacial Drumlin State Trail, which runs through the southern part of the town.

A drumlin is a kind of elongated hill. The kind of formation receding glaciers are apt to leave. “One end is quite step, whilst the other end tapers away to ground level,” says the Geography Site, a British page with helpful diagrams.

The section of the trail we walked didn’t have any kind of slopes at all, but the name refers to the drumlins that the trail passes by or over during its entire length, which is 53 or so miles. It runs from suburban Milwaukee to suburban Madison, or the other way around.

The trail began as a section of the Chicago & North Western’s main line between Milwaukee and Madison. The railroad abandoned the line in the 1980s, after which I assume the Rails to Trails Conservancy did its fine work.

I first noticed the trail on Google Maps and decided to investigate further when I saw that the trail crossed a part of Rock Lake on a feature called Glacial Drumlin Train Trestle, which sounds like an English folk revival band from about 50 years ago. I decided I wanted to see the trestle.

We accessed the trail from a parking lot near a renovated depot.
To the south of the trail at that point is an industrial complex belonging to Vita Plus. In its way, as interesting as anything we saw in Wisconsin that day.
The company provides “feed, nutrition and management expertise to dairy and livestock producers,” according to its web site.

Moving on, we headed deep into the woods. Except that for most of the way to Rock Lake, residential districts were on both sides, maybe 30 feet from the edge of the trail.
Still, it was a pleasant walk, crowded with neither bicyclists nor hikers. Phlox were a-bloomin’ along the trail.
Eventually we got to the trestle. Because I didn’t bother to check Google Images, I was expecting to see some kind of bridge substructure. The term “trestle” inspired that idea. Instead, we crossed a nice enough but not very dramatic bridge occupied by a few fishing enthusiasts.
Views of Rock Lake from the trestle, to the north and to the south. Pyramids lurk under the waves, they say. Built by aliens, no doubt. To harness pyramid power and teach mankind to live in peace and harmony.

A local Nessie would be better, but I’ll pass along whatever tales are on offer.

Lake Mills and Its Pyramidal Oddity

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In late May, I benefited from a bit of service journalism offered by the Chicago Tribune, which told me that the state of Wisconsin wasn’t charging entry fees to state parks on the first weekend in June.

So on June 2, we sought to take advantage of the situation by driving up to Wisconsin for the day — and probably proving the marketing arm of the state right when it calculated that such an offering would attract some out-of-state visitors, especially from Illinois.

Before we went to any state park, however, we stopped in the pleasant town of Lake Mills, which is in Jefferson County in the southern part of the state, between Madison and Milwaukee. We had a satisfying lunch at a diner called Cafe on the Park, which is on Main St. across the street from Commons Park. Then we took a stroll over to the park.

Visible from the park are some interesting buildings, such as the former Odd Fellows Hall and local opera house. Now it’s occupied by an antique mall.

The charming Lake Mills Public Library. Closed on Sunday, or I would have gone in.

There’s a bandstand in the park. Wouldn’t be a proper small-town park without one. With patriotic bunting. Nice touch. Formally it’s the Franklin Else Memorial Bandstand, though you (I) could argue it’s a large gazebo.

The Veterans Monument in the park is a little odd. It’s respectful and all, but has some unusual design elements.
It has a triangular shape, for one thing, with three triangular columns rising from a triangular base to support a triangular top. Triangles are also etched into the design in various places.
Besides all that, a black stone pyramid is the centerpiece of the memorial. Why? Or, if you’re feeling more surprised, WTF?

No marker on or near the monument explains. I didn’t know what to make of that local oddity until I got home and looked around some.

Twenty years ago, the Tribune published an article about Lake Mills and its adjacent body of water, Rock Lake.

“There’s something in Rock Lake.

“What, exactly, lies at the bottom of this placid fishing hole east of Madison is the stuff of local legend, the obsession of scores of divers and the spark of an unlikely controversy that has raged among locals for decades.

“Believers, including many old-timers and diving enthusiasts, say that ancient pyramids, ruins and even a serpent-like, 200-foot-long rock figure lay beneath these algae-filled waters. They say pre-Columbian dwellers built the structures on dry land before the area was flooded by geological upheavals and a dam built in the 1800s.

“Skeptics… say there’s nothing but natural piles of rocks below the 40-foot depths…. the otherwise unremarkable town of Lake Mills, which abuts Rock Lake, [calls] itself ‘City of the Pyramids.’ “

City of Pyramids, eh? Sounds like something a ’30s newspaperman made up and a ’50s chamber of commerce ran with. A little whimsical to incorporate into a veterans memorial, no? Then again, do such memorials need to be somber to the point of sameness, ignoring local lore?

That’s hardly the end of online descriptions of the supposed structures at the bottom of Rock Lake. Grazing through some of them, you come up with lines like:

“You can’t mistake certain things. There’s a city down there. There’s no question about it.”

“There are remarkable, artificial underwater structures beneath the waters of Rock Lake, Wisconsin but unfortunately for many years these prehistoric ruins have been ignored by researchers.”

“Much like Judge Hyer before him, Taylor believed that the three to four pyramids (the number changed with each reporting) was [sic] Aztec in origin and were built during a drought when the lake was completely drained and they were sacrificial altars to the rain god to bring the rains back.”

“Aerial photos, side boat sonar scans, and underwater divers eventually charted a complex of at least nine different stone structures, including: two rectangular pyramids, several stacked-rock walls, two ‘Stone Cone’ areas, a conical pyramid, and a large ‘Delta Triangle’ structure.”

“Former state archaeologist Bob Birmingham told the Wisconsin State Journal in 2015 that the tales were ‘a bunch of baloney.’ ”

Bob Birmingham chalks up the shapes to piles of rock left by receding glaciers, and notes that such piles are found in other Wisconsin lakes. My, that’s boring. Tales of ancient peoples building mysterious structures are awfully romantic.

Somehow, I’m inclined to agree with Bob.