MKE on MKE

Is there one place that you explored for Urban Spelunking that stands out to you, or was your favorite?

There have been so many but one I always come back to is what the Bradley Center people used to call the North North Building, because it was north of the North Building, which had the ammonia system for making ice for hockey and ice shows.

It was a plain, square brick building at the intersection of two alleys, but something about it always seemed interesting to me, though I can’t say exactly why. It just had a vibe. I finally got them to let me inside (they had been leery because it was used for storage and didn’t want it get broken into) and I found a Usinger’s elf sticker on a door, so I contacted Fritz Usinger who told me it was built as a stables and garage for Usinger’s delivery wagons and later trucks and they called it “Art’s Garage” because one of their salespeople, Art Schoen, lived upstairs in an apartment with his family. Fritz connected me to Art’s son Lloyd who had an amazing story to tell of growing up in the building and about how the neighborhood used to be and how it had changed over the years. I went to Lloyd’s house to pick up the photos that are in the story and he had bags of candy for my kids and was just the nicest guy.

Later, after it was torn down for the Fiserv, I got an email with a photo of the door that has the elf sticker on it. A woman bought it at a salvage business and installed it in her house.

Lloyd’s story, the way the story kind of unfolded, the tale of a changed neighborhood, the fact that it was being torn down not long after for the new arena, and just the fact that my hunch turned out to be right makes it one of my favorites. Along with meeting Lloyd, who was awesome. It’s also a good reminder that every building has a story to tell.

https://onmilwaukee.com/articles/spelunkingbcnorthnorth

Is architectural preservation something that Milwaukeeans should take more seriously?

I think we take it pretty seriously, at least some of us do, but there could always be more of us. I don’t think we need to save every single thing that is X years old, but it’s important that we save landmark historic sites, buildings of importance by important architects, examples of the richness of our architectural history, neighborhoods that have a uniqueness. I love contemporary architecture, too, so I’m not biased against the new, but like Jane Jacobs, I think that our landscape is best when it’s a mix of old and, tall and low and medium. I definitely think movements like urban renewal of the 1950s and ‘60s that just bulldozed entire blocks and areas wholesale were a terrible mistake and one I hope we’ll never make again.

You recently played drums at Summerfest as part of Milwaukee Remembers, can you explain how you got involved with this?

I started playing music at about age 9 or 10 and was in bands in high school. When I moved here, my first friendships were through music (https://onmilwaukee.com/articles/bernboys) and I played in bands pretty much nonstop until I had kids. The last one I was in, The Yell Leaders, were named VH1’s best unsigned band in the Midwest and we traveled a fair bit. I loved it. One of our former members passed away after a long battle with cancer earlier this year and her husband, another former member, organized this show.