Does Milwaukee HAVE a downtown..

[Goose]

I have seen pics of milwaukees skyline,or lack of and it just seems to be a building here and a building there,I wonder why there is no concernable downtown,how was it laid out and why do some cities downtowns seem like this and others are quite obvious,Buffalos seems to be the same way. I have not been to Milwaukee and I am sure it is a great city but just wondering why there isnt a couple of more signature buildings in the dt.

[eomaha.com]

No concernable downtown?

Milwaukee has a great downtown... hopefully someone will take this opportunity to post a bunch of photos.

[Badgers77]

There are more sig. buildings going up downtown, especially if tyhis new skyscraper goes up downtown. Water Street, and other areas are often very busy.

[MilwaukeeD]

goose, milwaukee has a fairly large downtown (in size), for cities of similar population. some skyscrapers were built near the lake for the views. others were built near the river. others along wisconisn avenue. Downtown is kinda split into two neighborhoods East and West of the river. As a result, it is kinda difficult to get a good shot of it. Very rarely do you even see a shot that has all three of the three tallest buildings in it.

i guess the main reason is that there is no "center" of downtown for tall buildings to cluster around.

[UWMilwaukeeJay]

... these shots, for instance, great views of milw's downtown but it misses the 3rd, 6th, and more tall buildings

[i_am_hydrogen]

Milwaukee may not have any real signature buildings, but downtown definitely has some great low-rise architecture. I took these a few months ago.





Can't forget about the Brise de Soleil

[UWMilwaukeeJay]

i believe the milw. art museum tends to be milwaukee's signature building when it comes to downtown...


i think this guy just needs to see density in milwaukee...someone post some dense pics

[i_am_hydrogen]

^Okay. This one was taken by cubercle.

[MilwaukeeD]

or for instance, with this shot from the lakefront, you can't see the second or third tallest, which are along the river.

[MilwaukeeD]

hydrogen, yeah, that is probably the best shot to see almost everything, at least east of the river.

[Jules]

Cool Milwaukee pano. I don't think I've ever seen one from that angle.

[Markitect]

Downtown Milwaukee doesn't have a well-defined central "core" of skyscrapers because Downtown Milwaukee wasn't quite built around a central core to begin with. Instead, Downtown is more rectangular and elongated in an east-to-west direction, rather than a circular or squareis shape of other cities' downtowns. This happened due to a combination of reasons:

1. Topography - Most of what is today Downtown Milwaukee was built upon rather marshy land that was filled in with dirt, sand, debris, and whatever else could be found to make dry land on top of which to build. As a result, the underground conditions are not quite ideal for erecting large, heavy, tall buildings. Of course, it is not impossible, but the construction techniques necessary for building skyscrapers on such land adds to the cost of building a building, especially buildings that are tall. They require special foundation work and many pilings which much be driven into the ground, driven through the top layers of fill, and through the softer ground of the burried marshland in order to reach rock stable enough to support the weight of tall buildings (there are instances to this day of buildings that are sinking or settling because of the underground conditions).

This is why many skyscrapers in Downtown Milwaukee are not built around a central core, because that's where the lowlands are, where the marshes used to be. True, there are a few exceptions, but most Downtown skyscrapers are built a few blocks outside the river valley, uphill from those lowlands, where ground conditions are more stable.

Related to this is the fact that downtown Milwaukee is not flat. The landscape undulates between highlands and lowlands due to the bluff along the lakefront on the east and higher grounds to the west, with the middle being in a river valley. This results in an illusion that skyscrapers built in the lowlands being shorter than they actually are when compared to the skyscrapers built on higher ground.

Furthermore, the high ground along the lake has attracted a long string of residential high-rises inside and outside of the Downtown area. It is sort of a "second skyline" that most people overlook. This happened as a result of the stable ground conditions (a good, solid rock base that doesn't require all of the aforementioned special foundation work...which means the cost of erecting a tall building is comparatively less expenvie) and a prime location offering lake views (an ameinity developers know tenants are willing to pay a premium for). Cities without such water frontage don't have such geographic advantages, so residential high-rises tend to be built within their downtown cores instead.

2. Urban economics - Milwaukee was, and still is, an industrial city. As such, industrialists tended to build their offices among their factories, to keep in continuous contact with their workers, rather than to build them in separate office buildings in Downtown, away from their plants.

Furthermore, Chicago is only 90 miles to the south, strategicaly located at the base of the Great Lakes (with internal connection to the Mississippi River via canals) and the central railroad hub for the upper central portion of the US. Such a location has been more advantageous for all kinds of businesses to locate, rather than up in Milwaukee.

3. Urban fragmentation and elongation - Milwaukee has been fragmented since the pioneer days...it originated as three separate settlements along the river, each of them competing with the others to become the dominant settlement in the area. This resulted in each settlement having its own "center," and this arrangement even continued long after the three were officially merged to create Milwaukee (mostly though, the big rivalry was between Juneautown on the east, and Kilbourntown on the west; Walker's Point on the south was relatively quiet and fell behind the other two due to its own internal disputes about deeds and claims to land and the area has been separate enough to have never been considered part of Downtown anyway).

Later on, a significant railroad depot was built along the lakefront. The depot sparked commercial development in close proximity, and so the commercial section on the east side of the river (the old Juneautown) grew out eastward toward the lakefront depot.

Later on still, the City and County began a major planning effort to create a civic center--a collection of government and cultural buildings and public spaces--which was built in part of the old Kilbourntown area. So the commercial section on the west side of the river grew westward toward the civic center.

That is how the east-west elongated organization of Downtown Milwaukee came to be.

[UWMilwaukeeJay]

994 posts for mark, 994 relevant, great reply..that could have not been said any better.

[scraperboy]

lol of course milwaukee has a great downtown! Milwaukee is great in the summer

[NaptownBoy]

First of all, what is a concernable downtown?

[Jason]

Coming from a smaller city (albeit, one with a dense and "concernable" downtown for a city of its size), I've never felt as though Milwaukee hasn't had an obvious, and big-city-like downtown feel to its core areas. It is more dense then skyline or aerial shots usually tend to indicate, and more urban then most photos you usually see (except for some of the great photos we see here from our Milwaukee contingent who know how to show you Milwaukee).

[Paule]

Milwaukee's DISCERNABLE Downtown

[Goose]

The last pic by paule really shows a downtown look,thats the look I guess i always associate with seeing a major cities dt,I just never seen Milwaukee s qiute as much as others.

[Avian001]

I do not understand the original question. Each city has a unique signature. Milwaukee has a clearly identifiable downtown. And it's a city that has unique characteristics. To me, it is far more "Central European" in its physical attributes than other US cities its size. Meaning, it is a city of magnificent historical structures, and not necessarily flashy, hi-rise modern ones. But it is still looking toward the future.

Height alone does not correlate with quality.

For example, Calatrava's Museum is superb modernism, and yet it still fits in well with the notion that Milwaukee is a city that honors its history and yet accepts the new vision of the 21st Century.

[Azn_chi_boi]

Milwaukee's downtown is great... I think it is great for a city that size...

BTW, everytime I go to Downtown Milwaukee, I go to Grand Ave Mall, is that located in downtown, or just out side of it?