Wetlands in the Valley

One summer evening a while back, I was headed by bike out to the Target near Miller Park, headed west through the Menomonee Valley. Imagine my delight when I found that not only had a very smooth and generously wide bike path been completed alongside the road, but that some of the vast lands of the former Milwaukee Road Shops had been converted into a sort of neo-wetlands park.



Two massive smokestacks are the final structures remaining from the enormous complex that once sprawled over many acres. Intended to be preserved as a tribute to the area's industrial heritage, their future was in doubt for some while. But they have been successfully restored.


April, 2006


August 2007

The smokestacks form the centerpiece of the new Chimney Park. Around them, the modest and cleanly modern landscaping that has sprung up underneath the 35th Street Viaduct looks great. New holding ponds attempt to restore some of the wetland that was lost in the rush to development over a century ago. Simple curving gravel paths wind among them, complete with small viewing overlooks and scattered benches.

Overall it's a lovely and peaceful counterpoint to the renewing industry that fills the rest of the valley.



Signsrelate the history of the valley, as well as the intent of the various new projects that have gone in.



The signs and the bike trail are part of the Hank Aaron State Trail, an ambitious effort to create a continuous connection from the lake all the way out to Miller Park. From the description on the web site, the east end has a long way to go -- they want you to go through some alley, turn, turn again, turn again... I've been through that area plenty of times and never seen any signage to indicate where this all is supposed to happen.

But west of 6th Street, it's pure biking bliss.

As a bicyclist, I can't overstate how much I appreciate this bike path. It's broad, separated from the street, gently curved and sloped, and freshly paved with smooth asphalt. It runs unbroken for several miles, providing easy passage through an area whose potholed and train track-laced streets can be intimidating. And future expansion plans are exciting -- imagine being able to ride from the East Side on the bike path, down to the lakefront, then all the way out to the State Fair grounds -- all without having to ride on a major road!

Train Station Progress

Milwaukee's train station has been under remodeling for a year or so, and it's coming together. The inside's a shifting maze of construction partitions and temporary spaces as the work moves around to keep the station operational during construction; outside, the strange tangle of structural beams that form the new front elevation has been assembled, painted, and clad in glass. The space behind it will serve as the new waiting area, a bright and open space to replace the old dim and dingy interior.









The remodeling meant the loss of one of the city's most prominent examples of New Formalist architecture, but the building as built was an unacceptably degrading way to enter the city, with a dim and depressing interior virtually devoid of windows, natural light, and charm of any sort.



I don't know what to think of the crazy-quilt arrangement of random diagonal structural members; it looks a bit like somebody's pet crazy academic theory come to life, or else random chaos -- an attempt to substitute flash for substance and well-designed order. But at least it should make the waiting room space interesting, and it'll make the station easy to find: meet me at the pick-up-sticks building! The news space will certainly be bright, inviting and spacious.

But amid all the hype surrounding the waiting room and ticketing remodel, what's being overlooked is that the process of boarding trains will remain as uninviting as ever, since the renovation will not be touching the train shed.

The train shed (and I cannot think of a more appropriately derisive name for it) is and will remain a singularly dingy, undignified and unattractive place. It is lit solely by sodium vapor lamps. It sends passengers down a mini-maze of grungy concrete tunnels. And as a space, it's utterly forgettable, with almost no design elements beyond basic necessities whatsoever.

The entire art of boarding and detraining with grace seems to have been lost in America. Most of the great train sheds of yesteryear have been retired (St. Louis's Union Station) or demolished (Chicago's Union Station, New York's Penn Station, the latter famously eulogized by Vincent Scully: "Through it one entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat.") The Penn Station train shed was a true work of art, a cathedral in raw iron and glass, with shafts of sunlight piercing its depths. Milwaukee's train shed is a dingy bunker that deserves to be ripped down and replaced with something designed by someone who gives a damn, rather than someone committed to putting up the cheapest roof possible.

Still. The rat warren may remain at trackside, but at least Milwaukee will soon have a dignified place to wait for a train.

Meanwhile, down in Chicago....

So I'm livin' in Chi-town now. I still have a lot more topics in Milwaukee to wrap up, but here's a few notes from 90 miles south.


First off: I never thought I'd miss Milwaukee's mamby-pamby wussy-foot drivers, but now I'm not so sure. When drivers in Milwaukee come across a guy on a bike, they generally act as though they've never seen such a thing in all their lives. They hang out behind it as if they're scared to get too close, and they will not pass unless they can give like twenty feet of clearance. I always figure Milwaukee drivers think their cars are much fatter than they actually are.

It's always annoyed me -- I need drivers to GO, to pass me quickly, so I'm free to dodge and swerve around whatever obstacle come my way. If a car's hanging out behind me, I can't juke around potholes or opening doors or whatever, because I don't know where the car behind me is.

But not down in Chicago! Oh, Chicago drivers know exactly how wide their cars are, they know the biker only needs about a foot to spare, and lord almighty that's about all they give you!

On the plus side, drivers down here aren't so all-fired determined to give up their right-of-way at four-way stop signs. In Milwaukee, it doesn't matter if the driver got there first, it doesn't matter if he's been sitting there five minutes waiting to go, it doesn't matter if he's having a fricking life emergency -- if he sees a bicycle within half a mile of that stop sign, he's gonna sit there and wait for that bike to go! Nothing infuriates me more than coming to a complete stop, only to have some driver insist that I take a right-of-way that's not mine. Dude. I've already stopped. You're not doing me any favors. You're just wasting everyone's time -- yours, mine, and whoever's waiting behind us. You think I'm gonna run out in front of you and your half-ton death machine? What, do I look stupid? If I was stupid, I'd be driving!!

Take your damn right-of-way!!!

*phew*, I needed to get that out of my system.


Second: I have taken an initial measure of the North Branch Chicago River "bike trail", and found it wanting. Much of it's either too rough, too twisty, or too sidewalk-like to qualify as a useful bike path. On top of that it repeatedly changes sides of the river and crosses very major roads instead of ducking under bridges. But the worst offender was a portion near Touhy Avenue that suffers from a severe case of "designed by architects".

"Designed by architects" is my derisive catch-all for any built object that puts style over functionality, to the detriment of the latter. In this case, a portion of the "bike trail" is actually a concrete sidewalk, that repeatedly offsets like a stair. If two bikers were negotiating this in opposite directions, they'd take a path that hits both of the inside corners and inevitably collide. You don't make a bicycle go through a right-angle turn! Oh, but it looks so cool to have this sidewalk that just ends, but only it doesn't end, it actually keeps going! Designed by architects.

Coast Guard Station Salvation?

http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=671253

A new proposal has been floated to rehab the 1916 Coast Guard Station along Milwaukee's lakefront, calling for conversion of the Prairie Style building to a maritime museum focused on Milwaukee and Lake Michigan. The time limits on the previous proposal, an Indian cultural center that's been floating around in fund-raising limbo for 4 years, expired over the summer, prompting Milwaukee County to call for its demolition.



The Coast Guard station has been allowed to rot for decades, subject to fires, a deteriorating roof, and a collapsing sea wall. In its current state, it's one of those buildings that easy for laypersons or developers to dismiss as an "eyesore" (one of my pet peeve words as it's so often abused and misused.)



Renovated, however, it could be a thing of unquestioned beauty. It's a bit hard to see through all the window boardups and general decay -- this building has none of the ornamental razzamatazz of City Hall or the Pfister Hotel. Its beauty is a bit more subtle.... and till it's renovated, it's hard to fully appreciate.

I will say this: it's absurd that anyone would oppose a private for-profit entity's proposals to redevelop this historic property. Opposition to private business on the lakefront is meant to keep it from turning into a giant parking lot or housing development -- not to remove options from preserving important parts of its own heritage. We allow the marina to operate. There's a kite stand, a concession stand, bike rentals, the Art Museum, Discovery World, Alterra... we really couldn't find a way to let some restauranteer or other willing entrepreneur get in and do what must be done to salvage the Coast Guard Station?


The building after an April 2005 fire that damaged the roof.

This is an existing building, not someone coming in out of the blue and gobbling up open park land. It's a part of the lakefront's heritage. Show some common sense, Milwaukee! This handsome beast deserves to be saved.

North Point Lighthouse

The historic North Point Lighthouse and its conjoined keeper's quarters have been empty for many years, but over the past year an extensive reconstruction project has been bringing the 1888 keeper's house back into a proper state. I've been dropping by on occasion to follow the progress.

October 2003:

Boarded up and closed for years.

April 25, 2007:

Lots of wood elements are being removed, indicating extensive rot.

June 10, 2007:

New porch framing and sheathing.

August 11, 2007:

New roof and cladding.

September 27, 2007:

Grounds beginning to shape up.

The current lighthouse was built in 1879 (replacing a 1855 structure threatened by bluff erosion) and re-used the existing lantern. Its height was doubled in 1912 as trees growing on the bluffs obscured the view, and it operated until 1994.

When work is finished in the fall, this venerable old structure will be opened for tours. Huzzah!

More on the North Point Lighthouse: Seeing the Light, including a vintage postcard of the original appearance of the tower and keeper's house, showing the house's original design intent a bit more clearly than can be seen today.

Bayshore Town Center: Still a Place for Cars

Having made a few trips up there, I figure it's time to throw out my two bits' worth on Bay Shore Town Center.



Let me start by saying that, whatever gripes I and others may have, they've really achieved something remarkable here. It's a brand new Main Street, something we haven't built in America in five decades. It does a lot of things right: streetside parking, sidewalks, lots of visual and functional connections between inside and outside, public spaces, mixed uses, a welcoming and inviting atmosphere. There may have been some tactical and strategic blunders along the way, but the people who built this thing were striving to make something a cut above the usual suburban drek of our times, and I really appreciate that.



That said, I have some gripes. Some are easily fixed. Others... well, like I said, this sort of thing hasn't been done for fifty years, so maybe it's inevitable that it'll take a few tries to work out the kinks.

Make no mistake about this place: pedestrian-oriented or not, parking is still king. Parking lots, curbside parking, parking garages, and more parking lots surround and suffuse the place. There is an assumption in place that 100% of customers will arrive by automobile. You can see it in any number of ways.

For example: where the hell are the bike racks?! I surveyed the entire complex and, after much searching, located a grand total of three bike racks in the entire place. One's next to Alterra Coffee, one's kind of tucked off to the side by the central plaza, and one is a battered relic outside the entrance to Trader Joe's, which itself is rather detached from the pedestrian action to the east. Only this last one seems to be placed with the idea that customers using a store might arrive by bicycle.





The sidewalks ought to be lined with small M-racks, or the loops that simply bolt onto parking meters. Every major store ought to have a longer set of M-racks. Kohl's certainly has the room for it:



In a complex that's overflowing with parking, the lack of consideration for bicyclists is appalling. This problem could be fixed with relative ease.

For a "town center" based around a Main Street concept, the complex is a bit disconnected from the actual main commercial artery of Whitefish Bay, Silver Spring Drive. To get from Silver Spring to the heart of BSTC requires navigating a winding road past a minefield of parking lot and garage entrances. It's intimidating on a bike and not much fun in a car.



Winding roads, in fact, seem to be commonplace. It's largely an artifact of working around randomly placed existing buildings. Whatever the cause, it slows traffic down to a pedestrian pace (in such intimate quarters, that's a good thing), and it gives the commercial portions of the complex a bit of charm they might otherwise lack. To claim the place is without any sense of the past is not really accurate -- the whole thing is very much shaped by the existing mall buildings that have gone up over the past few decades.



On the east side, Bayshore Town Center remains as oblivious as ever to its residential neighbors, facing them with vast parking lots and the backsides of the mall's older buildings. The new exit to the east doesn't even align with the street across from it.



Probably the intention was to have the new street on axis with the central plaza, but a more respectful approach to the existing street grid would have been to align the road with the older street, then curve it as required to bring it onto the desired axis. At the outer edge of the complex, nobody is going to be awe-struck by the axial view past a hundred yards of parking lots.



On the west side, the Center pays proper homage to the nearby roaring interstate -- by turning its back to it, showing little besides parking lots and garages. This is the proper place to load up the sea of parking -- not where the mall abutts an older suburban neighborhood.



As others have mentioned, the architecture is largely forgettable -- a mishmash of contemporary commercial (acceptable, not especially interesting) and historical pastiche (corny, depressing), with the sole exception of a snazzy Modernist steakhouse, clad with a stunning contrast of polished flat-cut black stone panels, and random ashlar stone.





It's not as though the same red brick and EFIS that clad most of the buildings couldn't have been used to more memorable effect. It could have. But the designers or the owners wanted something that would conjure up vague images of an ambiguous historical past, and weren't willing to pay the considerable amounts of money it would take to do it right. That's the thing about contemporary architecture: it's good design adapted to today's building technologies. Do it right and it can be (relatively) affordable and good looking! Try and reproduce.... whatever it is they're trying to reproduce here without using the real materials, the real techniques, the real craftsmanship that went into the original, and you're going to end up with buildings that look like soggy cardboard.



And finally, at times it seems the architects didn't quite leave themselves enough room for all the ugly necessities:



There's also a lack of benches or other places to simply linger, outside of the central plaza.

So. There's lessons for next time. Meanwhile, the revived Bayshore seems to be doing a good business. You go there and you'll find people wandering the sidewalks, mingling, travelling on foot, even if only for a little while. Given that this is the closet thing we've had to urban expansion in the northern 'burbs, it's hard to find fault with that.

An Unfortunate Decision for the Goldmann's Building

Today was the final day of business for Goldmann's Department Store. Though the store was virtually empty of goods and wares, the lunch counter was packed throughout the day. At mid-afternoon, a crowd gathered to hear words from Mayor Barrett, the store's current and future owners, and neighborhood representatives.



Among the words of bittersweet reminisce and optimism that the building will continue as a place of commerce and communal gathering was a statement regarding its architectural future. The building will be remodeled inside and out, with the exterior being returned to its 1920s appearance.





I think it's a big, big mistake to do this.

Exploratory work has been done on the west elevation, removing some of the CMU coverup facade to see what remains of the older building beneath. From what I can gather, it looks like there might actually be two older facades underneath the 1950s coverup, one on the west side dating from the building's original construction (a strongly Victorian composition in red brick) and a circa 1920s reworking on the Mitchell Street side in brown brick. From the looks of what's been exposed, none of what remains is in particularly great shape, and a lot is missing. It can certainly be repaired, but it's going to be a lot of work.



But the end result will be undistinguished. Not that the building itself will necessarily look bad, but it will simply be more of what we already have lots of in Milwaukee. Brick Victorian commercial buildings are a dime a dozen in this town. Heck, there's a brown brick Chicago School building right next door.

The kind of bold, slightly campy yet unabashedly Modernist facade that has adorned Goldmann's for the last fifty years, however, is a vanishing rarity in Milwaukee. When this facade is wrecked, there won't be another one like it in the city. It is a unique creation, and its demolition is no less an architectural tragedy than the demolition of 19th century buildings is.



You want historical value? Nobody born after 1945 is likely to even remember the way the store used to look. For most Milwaukeeans, Goldmann's current appearance is simply how the store has always been.

Does it fit with its surroundings? Well, exactly which surroundings are we talking about? The Beaux Arts detailed Schuster's building? The Deco building next to that? The wood-framed gabled buildings with Flemish curved facades? Maybe the 1960s Modern bank across the street? Mitchell Street is a riot of architectural styles, both high and low, each one contributing to the street's visual vitality. Removing its premier 1950s entry will not enliven it, but make it more bland.



Is the facade bland and boring? Not at all. A close look rewards the viewer: the facade uses several different kinds of CMU, two of them tinted, one with ground glass embedded in it. Metal panels cover another portion of the facade, with a minimalist clock (sadly nonfunctional) at one end. A marching row of metal rods sits in front of this portion, offering an endless play of shadows as the sun moves across the facade. Details include the clock, the shiny aluminum and neon sign, and the bold lettering on the western facade.



People gathered today to lament the loss of an institution. Yet the loss of its physical embodiment was treated as cause for celebration. I'll say it again: in twenty years, people are going look at the heritage of the 1950s, and wonder why the heck we didn't save any of this stuff.

Book Bargain

The Heritage Guidebook by H. Russell Zimmermann is on sale at Harry W. Schwartz Bookshops for $5. It's a thorough guide to "landmarks and historical sites in southeastern Wisconsin", with entries on hundreds of buildings in Milwaukee and the towns surrounding it. It's well worth picking up, especially at that price!

UWM Needs New Bike Racks

For all the effort that UWM puts into encouraging its students not to drive to the crowded campus...they sure don't seem very committed to encouraging bicycle use.

Take a look at the bike racks at the Union, mid-day on a Wednesday:



They're jam packed. All three racks are full, and more bikes are locked to the guard rails around a nearby stairwell.

But look at the racks. They're the old-fashioned gridiron type. This type of bike rack is meant to have the bike's front wheel lifted over it. This requires a considerable ffort on the part of the users, especially if the racks are crowded. (If??



But many bikes today (such as my own hybrid) can't fit over these racks. Users then have no choice but to lock nothing but the front wheel -- an open invitation for the rest of the bicycle to be stolen.



Modern racks are a W shape, like these outside the Grand Avenue Mall downtown. They allow bikes to roll in without lifting and allow all types of bikes to be locked by the frame, not just the front wheel. They are permanently installed, rather than being a loose rack that gets shoved around when empty. And they are far more attractive.

UWM should be installing these, rather than letting this clear need go so inadequately met.

Doomed Mid-Century Modern

This little bat-winged building stands in West Allis, on Greenfield at 61st Street. It faces a simpler building across a parking lot. Both are fenced off; the second building appears to have undergone abatement (removal of asbestos and other hazardous materials.) Abatement's the harbinger of either renovation or demolition. Given the vintage, I'm betting on the latter.

It's a shame. The bat-wing building is particularly nice, with two clusters of multi-height hanging lamps at the apex of its pyramidal roofs, overhangs lined with downward-aiming can lights, and a stepped roof unlike anything I've ever seen. Like the similarly-conceived Mark Twain Cinema in St. Louis, I'm sure it looked impressive when lit up at night.



The sign -- another interesting period piece -- announces it as the St. Ann's Village Center, offering bingo, but the VV logo points to a previous name along the lines of Value Village. The second building was most recently a sales center for bathtubs and whirlpools.

And so another bit of our Mid-Century heritage passes away. In twenty years, they're gonna wonder why we didn't save any of this stuff.

Walgreens revisited

A recent Journal-Sentinel column praised the design of the new East Side Walgreens on Oakland Avenue. I agree, as a building, it's pretty sweet -- it's a set of bold forms, with some nice accent detailing (it's forbidden in these Modern days to call it "ornament" even though that's exactly what it is, but that's a subject for another post.) It's pleasing to look at, and a big, big step up from a typical suburban outlot Walgreens.



But it's still a Walgreens. It still means we lost our neighborhood grocery store, the only one within easy walking distance for thousands of UWM students and neighborhood residents. It still replaced a functionally identical Walgreens just a block south.

But I've griped about that before. It was a business transaction, among consenting private entities; the fact that it screwed the entire neighborhood.... well, that's just tough luck for us, right? Free market and all that. Me, I've been doing my best to avoid the Oakland Walgreens since last summer, when they killed off our Sentry.

For the present, here are a few other notes:

- The bike racks, which I had understood to be respectfully placed within the brick wall recesses along the sidewalk, are in fact located nearly at the back of the lot, on a sidewalk alongside the store -- a clear statement that they were an afterthought, not a priority. Similar non-consideration was given to the propane tank storage, a crude metal cage plopped on the sidewalk (and closer to the entrance than the bike racks.)


- I can scarcely fathom how enormous the parking lot is, especially for its highly urban location. I wonder if it will ever be anywhere close to full. I wonder if Walgreens has any statistics on how many of their customers arrive on foot or by bicycle. But hey boy, lookit that there green space!! That's what Oakland & Locust really needed -- not more businesses, not apartments, but some fantastic green space. After all, it's an arduous five hundred foot walk to the nearest major urban park.

- Someone was clearly hammering a square peg into a round hole. The Oakland Street elevation consists of massive glass windows, which open up the store's interior and allow passersby on the sidewalk an inviting view of....



...the doors to the bathrooms?!

And where are the window displays, which, y'know, are ostensibly the point of having display windows? Windows can also serve to open up the space to the outside, and to bring natural light, but those seem to be verboten under retail rules of conduct, and indeed if you removed the blue panels you'd find yourself looking at the backside of a display shelf.



- There are several nice benches and half-walls to provide space for people to sit while waiting for a bus or whatever else. It's a thoughtful gesture.

- I've heard many people over the years complain about Modernist design, and a couple in regards to this particular building. I perosnally find an unambiguous beauty in this sort of bold massing contrasted with delicate, transparent ornament.

It may be chilly, but it looks nice!

It's been a beautiful week in Milwaukee! Clear skies and crisp air have drawn me outside with my camera every evening this week, and I've come back with a crop of great photos.







Many more can be seen here.

Two urban articles, and a note

Two interesting and topically related articles in the Shepherd this week:

Urban Living, Sprawl and Transit: an interview with former mayor John Norquist.

On the Road to Sprawlville, Shop 'Til You Drop: a look at the shady politics supporting the exurban Pabst Farms development.

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The FlexCar system has debuted at UWM! This fantastic idea lets you essentially rent a car on an hourly basis -- allowing you to bypass the expense and difficulty of car ownership without suffering the negative side effects.

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On a personal note, I will be moving to Chicago at the end of this month, in pursuit of both professional and personal goals. This blog will remain in place, for the foreseeable future at least. Given the mental backlog of topics I still want to write about, I could keep going for quite some time!