By Whitney Gould
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (Wisconsin)
Copyright 2006 Journal Sentinel Inc.
You probably drove by it countless times without giving it a second thought — a squat little building hugging the west side of the Cherry St. bridge, just south of Schlitz Park. The only noticeable details, befitting its Streamline Moderne style, were a fluted door frame and glass-block windows.
But when it met the wrecking ball late last month, swallowed up by the huge Manpower project next door, this former fireboat station on the Milwaukee River took a chunk of history with it. Shame on the city for not trying harder to save it.
Built in 1940, the modest, blond-brick building was an artifact of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Progress Administration. According to Capt. James Ley, historian with the Milwaukee Fire Department, the building was used until 1949 to house fireboats that served industries that lined the Milwaukee River. After that, the station housed the fire prevention bureau. The building had been vacant since 1962, when the bureau moved to its new home at 7th and Wells streets.
“It was pretty far gone” before it was razed, said Todd Weiler, a spokesman for the Department of Neighborhood Services. There were cracks from the roof to the foundation, the brick veneer was peeling away from the walls and the interior was laced with asbestos, he said. So, when the city’s real estate officials recommended demolition, no one in the bureaucracy objected.
But wait a minute. Any building that’s been vacant and not maintained for 44 years is bound to be in sorry condition. This looks like a classic case of demolition by neglect - and by a city that supposedly values its history.
Andrea Rowe Richards, a spokeswoman for the Department of City Development, defends the city’s overall stewardship of its buildings. She said that at one point, her agency did issue a request for proposals to reuse the fireboat station, but “it did not net proposals that could pay for the extensive repairs and infrastructure that was needed to put the building back into a usable condition.”
That’s news to David Zach. The writer, educator and futurist said he had inquired some years ago about buying the building for his studio and was told to “get in line” behind a long list of other interested parties. “I was told that the city ‘knew it was a gem’ and had plans of their own for this building,” he said. “It’s one thing to tear down a building that no one cares about. That wasn’t this building.”
The Fire Department’s Ley said he had even heard from a design firm in Minneapolis that was interested in rehabbing it.
No one in city government has offered me a convincing explanation for why it wasn’t possible to save this little remnant of the New Deal, which put millions of Americans to work during hard times. The cost of repair, according to the city’s estimates, would have been around $100,000, a relatively small sum as these things go. (Conversion to, say, offices or a coffeehouse obviously would have raised the cost. But given the modest size of the property, it doesn’t look as if we’re talking huge sums.)
Tim Stemper, vice chairman of the Historic Preservation Commission, said that because the building wasn’t landmarked or part of a historic district, he and his fellow commissioners knew nothing about the demolition. But he thinks that points out the need for overhauling notification procedures, something that Rowe Richards, the development agency spokeswoman, said is being discussed.
“Before a building like this gets razed, the public should have an option to buy it, move it or fix it up,” Stemper said.
Reform can’t come too soon. In May, preservationists were alarmed to find that a beautiful Queen Anne house at 1018 E. Knapp St. had been leveled to make way for a parking lot. It, like the fireboat station, had no landmark protections.
No, we can’t save everything. But we should not be so cavalier about letting go of history, either. Obsolete municipal buildings, in particular, lend texture and a sense of place to changing neighborhoods, and they tell the story of government’s role in building up a city that always has been proud of its services.
For a glimpse of what might have been, consider just three examples of humble but well-crafted city buildings that have been recycled for new uses: Another old fireboat station, a red-brick gem built in 1915 at 105 N. Water St., serves as offices for a design firm; an exquisite little Georgian Revival building at 1911 N. Humboldt Ave., built in 1935 to store snowplows and street equipment, is being turned into a restaurant with a glassy, curved addition; and a 1908 Cream City brick power plant and former city forestry department building at 1872 N. Commerce St. is home to Lakefront Brewery.
How much poorer Milwaukee would be without such reminders of where we came from. Better to save them than to sing the old song playing in Zach’s head these days - the one that goes: “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.”