Brooks Stevens Milwaukee Industrial Designer

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Brooks Stevens, born 1911 in Milwaukee, was the son of William C. Stevens, the Executive Vice President and Design Director for Cutler Hammer, a large manufacturer of electrical motor controls. William developed a preselector gearshift for automobiles in 1916, an innovation that would eventually make it easier to drive automobiles.

As a child, Brooks joined his father and traveled around the country to car shows observing him demonstrate automotive innovations. The time he spent with his father helped to further Brooks’ life-long passion for automobiles. His passion was drawing automobiles, trains, boats and building them from model kits. Brooks’ passion was interrupted at the age of eight when he contracted polio. His case was so severe that doctors predicted he would never walk again. With strict exercises, along with his father’s constant encouragement, Brooks regained full use of his leg but retained a life-long limp.

Brooks graduated from Milwaukee Country Day School (now known as the University School of Milwaukee). After graduating he began studying architecture at Cornell University in 1929. Brooks’ passion for automobile design was apparently greater than his interest in architecture, so he left college without graduating and returned to Milwaukee in 1933 to work for his father’s firm. In 1937 Stevens married Alice Kopmeier. Alice was well connected in Milwaukee society. Her father was Waldemar S. J. Kopmeier, the president of Milwaukee Ice and Coal, and her grandfather was Henry Uihlien, president of Schlitz Brewery. The Stevens first lived in Shorewood on Capitol Drive and Downer Avenue. In 1939 they built the home Brooks designed in Fox Point. It stands today as one of the most significant examples of modernist domestic architecture in the United States.

Making Milwaukee Famous

Schlitz Beer was known as “The Beer that Made Milwaukee Famous,” yet Brooks Stevens is the man who is well-known for making Milwaukee famous for great design in the mid-20th Century. Stevens developed a range of designs for products such as automobiles; engines for Briggs & Statton, Evenrude Motors and Johnson Motors; household appliances; farm equipment; and railroad cars.

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He is most recognized for his dramatic redesign of the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile in 1958. His background in architecture allowed his firm to also bid on architectural projects. When Miller Brewing Company began a massive renovation/rebuilding project of their physical plant in 1950, Stevens consulted on design for factory and office spaces. His most important contributions to the project were the façade and interiors of the Miller administration building.

Stevens other architectural and interior design projects included automobile showrooms, theaters, bowling lanes, office buildings, and motel concepts. His most aspiring but unrealized architectural concept was the 1964 Satellite Towers Hotel Complex in downtown Milwaukee on the Southwest corner of Fourth and Kilbourn. The complex would have become the country’s first convention hall combined with hotel space. Stevens hoped the Towers “would do for Milwaukee what the Eiffel Tower had done for Paris.” Unfortunately, the Satellite Towers met the same fate as many other public projects as it got caught up in government bureaucracy and never took off.

In 1950, the Layton School of Art mounted an exhibition of his work, the first museum retrospective for an industrial designer. Stevens founded the Brooks Stevens Design Research Center, an educational resource for people interested in learning more about industrial design. In 1954 he became one of the 10 charter members of American Society of Industrial Design. He received the ASID award in 1965 for “the distinguished advancement of the industrial design profession.” In 1983 the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design created the Brooks Stevens Chair of Industrial Design and two years later Stevens was presented with the first honorary doctorate for Industrial Design from MIAD. In 1959, Stevens opened a 12,500-square foot automotive museum in Mequon. The museum housed his own designs as well as other and became a production facility in 1988 for the new Wienermobile Fleet. Unfortunately, the museum closed in 1999, four years after his death. 

Brooks passed away in 1995, the last surviving of the founding members of the American Industrial Designers Society of America. During his career Stevens consulted with over 300 clients from the United States, Europe, Central and South America. Worldwide he rocked the design industry by popularizing the concept of “planned obsolescence.”

In 1997 the Milwaukee Art Museum acquired the Brooks Stevens archive which can be viewed online. The industrial design firm that Stevens established is still in operation, located in Wisconsin (with a second office in Minneapolis) and continues to develop cutting-edge designs. In 1978, Brooks Stevens’ son Kipp joined his father’s firm. In 1979 Kipp Stevens was appointed president and CEO of Brooks Stevens Design Associates. In 2007, Stevens’ firm was purchased by Ingenium Product Development and renamed BSI Product Development. While Kipp Stevens no longer runs the firm’s the day-to day management, he continues to serve as BSI Product Development’s chairman.

A special thank you to Brooks’ son Dave Stevens and Dave’s daughter Ashley for their generous time speaking to me about Brooks’ fascinating life and achievements.