History
| Milwaukee City Hall | |
| U.S. National Register of Historic Places | |
| U.S. National Historic Landmark | |
| City Hall in 1901 | |
| Location: | 200 E. Wells St. Milwaukee, USA |
|---|---|
| NRHP Reference#: | 73000085 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP: | March 14, 1973 |
| Designated NHL: | April 5, 2005 |
City Hall is the scene of the largest Socialist victory ever registered in an American city, when in 1910 Emil Seidel and a majority Socialist Common Council swept into office. Although the Socialist majority on the Common Council was short-lived, the city was led by Socialist mayors from 1916 to 1960. Mayor Daniel Hoan (1916-1940) and his successor Frank Zeidler (1948-1960) did little to advance the cause of Socialism in general, but their tenures in office were marked by an emphasis on provision of services for the working class.
City Hall was the marketing symbol of Milwaukee until the completion of the Calatrava wing of the Milwaukee Art Museum in 2001, but the bell tower continues to be used as a municipal icon and in some traffic and parking signs. Formerly the tower had a Welcome Milwaukee Visitors message on the front three sides; this was one of the iconic images of the opening sequence for locally-set Laverne and Shirley.
From 2006 to 2008, the entire building was renovated, including a complete disassembly and reassembly of the bell tower, by J. P. Cullen & Sons, Inc., a construction manager and general contractor headquartered in Janesville, Wisconsin. Before the restoration began, the bell was rung rarely because of seismic concerns, and in the last few years an assembly of scaffolds with protective coverings had been in place around the building to protect pedestrians from falling stone and brickwork.
City Hall was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1973, and declared a National Historic Landmark in 2005.
Read more about this topic: Milwaukee City Hall
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Both place and time were changed, and I dwelt nearer to those parts of the universe and to those eras in history which had most attracted me.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Bias, point of view, fury—are they ... so dangerous and must they be ironed out of history, the hills flattened and the contours leveled? The professors talk ... about passion and point of view in history as a Calvinist talks about sin in the bedroom.”
—Catherine Drinker Bowen (1897–1973)
“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)