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The Gettelman family home was built in the mid-1800s and still stands where it was built. (Photo by Elliot Hughes)
A small cadre of residents and historians may have saved some of the last vestiges of the old Gettelman Brewery on Milwaukee’s west side, but not as much as it had hoped.
The city’s Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee on Tuesday recommended awarding permanent historic status to one of three 19th–century buildings that once belonged to the Gettelman Brewery. It now rests on MillerCoors’ property.
Left out of the equation are two other adjacent structures. All three buildings were recently given temporary historic status by the city’s Historic Preservation Commission (HPC). The zoning committee took up the issue after the HPC’s ruling was appealed.
The committee’s decision, which will now go to the Common Council for final approval, opens the door for MillerCoors to move and preserve one of the buildings and demolish the other two.
“I feel very disappointed,” said David Boucher, a west side resident who nominated the three buildings for historic designation in an effort to save all of them from demolition.
David Boucher, who owns Amaranth Bakery and Café, nominated the three Gettelman buildings for historic status in an effort to prevent them from being demolished (Photo by Elliot Hughes).
MillerCoors originally targeted the Gettelman structures for demolition in March. They sit in a parking area on the MillerCoors campus, directly across the street from the company’s visitor center. MillerCoors determined the buildings need to be demolished to create more space for employee parking and staging for semitrailer trucks.
The three buildings in question include a house, which was originally the home of the Gettelman family before it was used for offices; a small office addition; and a large malt house. The structures are above lagering cellars, one of which dates to 1854.
MillerCoors acquired the buildings in 1961 and absorbed the Gettelman business in 1970.
The buildings are considered historically significant as standing examples of one of Milwaukee’s oldest regional breweries. The Gettelman Brewery is also considered a cultural touchstone, locally, for its popular advertisements and the technological inventions of Frederick “Fritz” Gettelman.
MillerCoors on Tuesday offered the zoning board a “compromise” proposal. It asked for permanent historic status for the Gettelman family house and said it would move the building across the street, next to the visitor center and preserve it. It proposed razing the office addition and malt house.
The zoning board voted for MillerCoors’ proposal, approving it 4-1 with only Ald. Nik Kovac opposing.
MillerCoors is prepared to cover the expected $406,000 relocating cost. What exactly MillerCoors would use the house for was not clear Tuesday. Company representatives said there would be some kind of display honoring the Gettelman Brewery’s achievements.
Boucher and others have said Milwaukee too often discards its historic places, rather than preserving them. He said renovating the three buildings and perhaps turning them into a restaurant could revitalize the stretch of State Street between the MillerCoors campus and Wauwatosa.
Ald. Mike Murphy, who represents the area, said in an interview that Boucher’s idea doesn’t make sense. The area is zoned for industrial purposes and MillerCoors employs 1,400 people. It’s important not to tamper with that, he said.
“I want to make sure those jobs are staying in our city and having those properties zoned industrial is important,” Murphy said.
The Common Council is expected to consider the proposal at its next meeting on Sept. 26. If the council accepts the zoning committee’s recommendation, MillerCoors will still have to obtain a “certificate of appropriateness” from the Historic Preservation Commission in order to move the house.
Its unfortunate that Alderman Murphy has not experienced restaurants in older industrial neighborhoods. It happens all the time across the country AND in Milwaukee. It is the relocation and demolition of a commercial building with costs that far exceed a million dollars while rendering it useless for commercial purposes that doesnt make sense. The goal of this effort was to develop a path toward reuse that was compatible with MillerCoors’ seasonal parking needs and W. State Street which is now slowly but gracefully transitioning from an incompatible post-war industrial strip. It didn’t happen.
Only lawyers and politicians called this a compromise.
I too am disappointed. I was at the session for another issue. I listened to citizens urge the committee to respect individual homeowners, historic interests, and green space above the single bottom line paradigm. The short term economic line won out each time. Being labeled “change resisters” nullified their want for change in triple bottom line directions. How long can the political decision be make that undoes a community’s rising up, collecting monies for their dreams and see it nullified by this limited vision. I had just finished reading “The Third Reconstruction” by Reverend Barber. We citizens will need to band together to get the message about the moral force of the people’s will back into the political world.
Some Milwaukee leaders may forget that preserving and marketing historical authenticity can be a successful economic development strategy.
There’s little in Milwaukee that is as unique, authentic and historic as the Gettelman complex, with surviving mid-sized brewery buildings dating to before the Civil War. It includes the only remaining 19th-century lagering cellars (how cool is that in Brew City?), which later became Gettelman’s “Rathskeller” where movers and shakers (such as Harleys and Davidsons) met weekly for a “Five O’Clock Club” and visitors sometimes toured.
The Pabst Brewery complex is a great example of city leaders doing the right–and smart–thing. Many city alders had supported a development proposal more than a decade ago that would have sacrificed most of Pabst’s historic buildings. However, enough council members saw the economic potential of preserving those buildings (not just a few token structures) and rejected that plan. Who would have even imagined that the subsequent development effort would be so wildly successful and even entice Pabst to return to open a small brewery here?
A rushed vote to give Miller/Coors a few more parking spaces (by rejecting the HPC’s recommendation to designate the whole complex) would kill any chances of a much-better big-picture plan from taking shape.
But the clock is ticking before the Sept. 26th council meeting when Gettelman’s fate may be irrevocably decided–and the complex may soon be “history.”