History
Plans were initially announced by First Wisconsin National Bank to construct a new headquarters building on August 21, 1969. Although no architectural designs were complete at the time of its announcement, bank officials indicated it would rise at least 40 stories. On March 18, 1971, bank officials unveiled the final design as a 42-story, 601-foot (183 m) skyscraper, encompassing an entire block fronting on East Wisconsin Avenue. Designed by James DeStefano of the Chicago office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, with Fitzhugh Scott Architects of Milwaukee serving as an associate planner for the project, the name of the tower was announced as the First Wisconsin Center.
Near the end of construction, a pair of fatalities occurred at the work site. In May 1973, a foreman died after being struck by a dump truck. That following July, one worker died and four others were injured when a derrick utilized in the installation of a 175-pound (79 kg) aluminum panel broke free and fell 41 floors to the ground. The building was topped-out on August 29, 1972, with the installation of the final 20-foot (6.1 m) steel beam atop the tower. In addition to bank officials, mayor Henry Maier, county executive John Doyne and Wisconsin governor Patrick Lucey were in attendance for the ceremony. The building was initially occupied on September 4, 1973, and celebrated its official opening on October 6, 1973.
Read more about this topic: U.S. Bank Center (Milwaukee)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)
“The awareness that health is dependent upon habits that we control makes us the first generation in history that to a large extent determines its own destiny.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“No cause is left but the most ancient of all, the one, in fact, that from the beginning of our history has determined the very existence of politics, the cause of freedom versus tyranny.”
—Hannah Arendt (1906–1975)