The downtown post office building, soon to be converted into retail and restaurant space. Photo courtesy of Steven Reyer.
Earlier this month, the main processing and handling facility for the Milwaukee Post Office, located on West St. Paul Avenue , was sold by a local private investment firm to a Chicago-based developer. According to news reports, the building’s new owners plan to convert the structure into a mixed-use facility, including retail, office, and restaurant space. The building itself is more than 1.1 million square feet, believed to be the second-largest in the city behind the US Bank Center . The property includes some 1,500 feet of land facing the Menomonee River , looking out at the Harley-Davidson Museum , the Iron Horse Hotel, and newly-developed parkland along Freshwater Way .
Reaction to the news seemed to be overwhelmingly positive, touting the deal as another example of downtown’s comeback. Similar, in fact, to the feelings surrounding the building of the post office facility in the 1960s. Indeed, the structure had a major impact on downtown Milwaukee ’s transition during the urban renewal era of the 1960s, facilitating major changes to Milwaukee ’s downtown and lakefront and hailed as a balm for an ailing center city.
Milwaukee’s central post office had been housed in the federal building on Wisconsin Avenue for over sixty years when local officials began to petition for the modern facility in 1960. The federal government allocated funds to the project, but a debate over where the building would be located greatly slowed its progress. One camp, led by US Representative Clement Zablocki (D – Milwaukee ), favored a site near the Old Soldier’s Home on the western edge of the county. Another, led by US Representative Henry Reuss (D – Milwaukee ), insisted that the facility be located near the center of the city.
An artist’s rendering of the proposed post office site. Milwaukee Journal, July 18, 1963.
Stay on top of the news of the day
Subscribe to our free, daily e-newsletter to get Milwaukee's latest local news, restaurants, music, arts and entertainment and events delivered right to your inbox every weekday, plus a bonus Week in Review email on Saturdays.
All agreed that the outlaying site would be less expansive, but the political tides of the time favored the downtown location. Reuss made it a matter of Milwaukee ’s survival, proclaiming that a new downtown facility would provide a badly-needed lift for the decaying central city. President John F. Kennedy’s administration, he insisted, was behind his plan, saying the president “recognizes the importance of saving downtown areas” and predicted that the loss of the post office would “sound the death knell to the downtown [area].”
Milwaukee Mayor Henry Maier also favored the downtown site. The plan fit with the mayor’s greater vision for downtown, particularly the areas bordering Milwaukee ’s waterways. By the 1960s, the once-bustling commercial traffic of the waterways had slowed considerably, and the murky and odorous waters of the Milwaukee and Menomonee rivers had become a major deterrent to development. The riverfronts were littered with empty lots and abandoned industrial buildings. The large-scale bulldozing of these buildings was seen as the way forward for the area. Modern parking ramps and shopping districts could fill these lots. Freeway ramps and spurs could link downtown to the outlying suburbs. And blocks of unsightly buildings left over from the turn of the century and earlier could be turned into a series of parks and promenades. All of this was aimed at “beautification,” washing away the ugly industrial past and replacing it with modern architecture, acres of parking, and carefully-engineered landscapes.
The front page of the Sentinel after the approval of the downtown plan.
In April 1963, the downtown site was approved, and much of elected Milwaukee rejoiced. Maier said the new post office could lead to development that would add as much a $500 million boost to the city tax base. Reuss proclaimed the project to be “the beginning of what can be the most inspiring start of renewal for our downtown.” The project was indeed a very important part of a multi-faceted plan for the area. The Milwaukee Road , the massive railroad line that ran from the Midwest to the Pacific coast, owned the site on which the new facility was to be built. The Milwaukee Road ’s footprint was considerable, with thick bands of track running through the southern half of the city into downtown and bending west to the Everett Street Depot on Clybourn Street between Second and Fourth Streets.
An aerial image of the rail yards and buildings that would be cleared for the new post office and freeway. Milwaukee Sentinel, January 5, 1963.
Both the Everett Street Depot and the Chicago Northwestern Railroad’s Lakefront Depot at the foot of Wisconsin Avenue were once bustling passenger stations. However, the post-war drop-off in rail travel had left each of these gorgeous structures as financial liabilities. In agreeing to sell the land for the project, the Milwaukee Road received $2.25 million from the county and state to build the new Milwaukee Union Depot (currently the Milwaukee Intermodal Station) just to the west of the post office. The Road then worked out a deal with Chicago Northwestern to reroute its Milwaukee passenger traffic to the new depot. In turn, the railroads sold the old depots to the county, which razed them both. The bulldozing of the Everett Street Depot simplified the East-West Expressway project (currently I-794), allowing major swaths of downtown along Clybourn and St. Paul Avenues to be torn down to make way for the twin freeway bridges. In 1968, the Lakefront Depot was also razed, despite efforts to save it in the name of historical preservation.
Milwaukee Union Station, opened in 1965 as a part of the post office project. The building was renovated in 2007 and presently known as the Milwaukee Intermodal Station. Photo courtesy of Steven Reyer
Ground was broken for the post office in July 1966. About 12.5 acres of land were developed as a part of the project, which would be privately owned and leased long-term to the Federal Post Office Department. By the time it was completed in 1968, its impact on the area was apparent: expressways loomed over gutted sections of the central city, landmark 19th century relics were gone and forgotten, and the cold brutalist/modernist architectural style was increasingly prominent.
|
|
The Chicago Northwestern's Lakefront Depot (L) and the Milwaukee Road's Everett Street Depot, both bulldozed as a part of the post office project.
The downtown post office also had an impact on how postal facilities were imagined and built across the nation. Just months after the facility opened, the US Postmaster General called it out as an example of how not to locate and design a major regional distribution center. Outlying post offices were cheaper to build and closer to the new methods – truck and airplane – of parcel distribution. The city was still receiving 14,000 sacks of mail by the railroads when the project was first envisioned downtown – a method that was almost obsolete by the time it was finished. Nor did the downtown envisioned in this period ever truly materialize. A backlash emerged to freeway construction and halted several projects, a historic preservation movement to save the buildings of old Milwaukee slowed the parking lot spree, and development gravitated towards the lakefront and Third Ward and away from the old commercial areas of the pre-war era.
Nonetheless, by the time the post office’s lease on the building expires in 2020, the downtown facility will have served Milwaukee for 52 years. It survived both a massive drop in mail volume and the renaissance of Milwaukee ’s waterfronts that left the “progress” of 1960s urban renewal severely out of step with the present-day view of downtown and its future. The building’s purchasers vow that there are no plans to tear the building down, saying it will be a “classic adaptive reuse.” While the structure is rarely hailed as one of architectural beauty, it stands as a significant downtown landmark, a monument to the future of the past and the ever-changing way in which Milwaukee sees itself and its potential.
Matthew J. Prigge is the author of the new book, Milwaukee Mayhem: Murder and Mystery in the Cream City’s First Century. Check out what else he is up to here.
