WHAT THE HILLEL? UWM HOUSES THREATENED

Jewish Federation Plans to Violate Kenwood Compact with Student Center Push.

Updated Tuesday, December 12th, 2006

A brief historical note: Of all districts in the city, that of Alderman Mike D'Amato presents the greatest potential for conflicts between supply and demand for land. These have been addressed in various ways over the years, beginning with the strictly-regulated historic districts like North Point and Kenwood Boulevard east of N. Oakland Ave. These wealthy neighborhoods, well supplied with attorney-residents, were insulated from the untoward effects of development long before their more modest neighboring precincts. They had the bucks.
A more recent development has been that of preservation of diverse neighborhoods like Brady Street and the decidedly modest East Village. The Neighborhood Overlay District there caused no end of headaches for D'Amato, including a bizarre lawsuit thrown out of Federal Court. [See Kaye to Pay in Tossed Rico Suit.]
Now D'Amato faces new pressures with a demand for institutional development in a residential neighborhood across from the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee. D'Amato once again supported the historic designation, as he had with the East Village. On Monday, the City of Milwaukee Historic Preservation Commission granted the request of these home owners of modest means.
Will we be seeing more of these grassroots movements arising in the future in response to other development plans? Within the last few months three buildings, all old, north of Brady Street were demolished. One, from the 1850s probably should have been preserved.
This question and others are being addressed as part of the "Milwaukee Comprehensive Plan -- Northeast Side." A Community Survey for those who live, work, shop or spend time in the Northeast Side of Milwaukee is available on-line at http://www.mkedcd.org/planning/plans/Northeast/NECsurvey.asp. Respondents may indicate whether they prefer more neighborhood overlay and historic preservation districts -- or fewer.
The city will forever be changing, and Ald. D'Amato's district will continue to see a good bulk of the change. However, you don't have to travel much further than Chicago to see what can happen when an established middle-class neighborhood happens to be adjacent to a very large and dynamic institution like a hospital or a university. It can disappear overnight.


If you haven't been paying attention to land grabs lately, put on your coat and hat and head to the southeast corner of N. Murray Avenue and E. Kenwood Boulevard where the Milwaukee Jewish Federation is quietly moving forward with plans to demolish two of six architect-designed bungalows in that threatened neighborhood. The organization has plans to replace the bungalows at 2005 and 2009 E. Kenwood Ave. with the two-story Hillel House, a social center for Jewish students, according to a report in the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle.*
(The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has been silent on the issue, possibly because reporter/columnist Whitney Gould has been indisposed and away from her job for a period of time.)
The federation bought the houses on October 11th for $350,000 each, and promptly filed a demolition permit, much to the surprise of the neighbors. The group has refused to be swayed by the objections of neighbors and Ald. Michael S. D'Amato, who has tried to find a better location for the facility. The City of Milwaukee Historic Preservation Commission held a hearing to determine the fate of the district on Monday, December 11th, 2006 at 3 p.m.
At the hearing, Hillel representatives insisted that they had cooperated with the alderman's attempts to find an alternate site, which were said to be ongoing.]
Preservation commission staff recommendsed the buildings be saved in this report.
The houses, and four others nearby were built as upper-middle-class housing in a single year, namely 1916. Each of the structures is a unique craftsman bungalow, a housing form that had only then begun to modernize the arrangement of American domestic space with repercussions still felt today. Part of the appeal of the buildings lie in their efficient utilization of space; these were among the first structures built with all modern utilities and appliances as we know them today. All have nearly identical chimneys -- but within a few years chimneys and fireplaces became passe, (at least for a while) lest neighbors think the homeowners lacked central heating!
At the time of the construction, the buildings were on the outskirts of town, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee was a teacher's college adjacent to a sleepy women's college known as Milwaukee-Downer Seminary. Nobody at the time envisioned that the genteel college would morph into a neighborhood-eating monster. Nobody today could doubt that it has. Perhaps no institution in this community is less suited to its site than UWM. Probably the biggest problem is that it is smack dab in the middle of an upper-middle-class area. This is fine for professors who want to live close to work, but has been difficult for those (including professors) who would like to see their residential neighborhood remain intact when the size and allure of the institution to which they are tenured or otherwise tethered spawns auxiliary institutions right in their backyard. And when the institutions in question are of a religious nature, a host of new issues are raised, thanks in part to the 2000 Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act.
The proposal before the commission is to create a historic district of all six houses in the area that were developed en masse by Louis Auer & Son, one of Milwaukee's most prominent developers of the time. [At the hearing representatives of the Jewish Federation said the Auer connection was overstated, apparently because the company had changed hands before construction.] The houses are 2005, 2009, 2015, 2019, 2025-2027 and 2029 E. Kenwood Ave. Another proposal is to grant interim designation to the first two houses mentioned -- those now owned by the Jewish Federation and threatened with demolition.
[At the meeting, which lasted nearly four hours, both designations were granted.]
The houses have, over the years changed hands many times, and all but the one at 2025-2027 are single family residences. In the past such famous individuals as Leon Joseph have owned parcels in the area. Even so, Joseph, a developer and son-in-law of Milwaukee developer George Bockl, never saw fit to demolish these structures, but was content to maintian the neighborhood's character. Those were the days!
All that seems likely to go out the window and into the trash if the city allows this piecemeal destruction to take place.
The proposal also threatens a very uneasy truce between "Town & Gown," since it was long understood that the university would not cross Kenwood Boulevard. Now, with a surrogate in the form of the Jewish Federation proposing to do so, citizens who care for the area immediately south of the university should express their concerns to the mayor and the alderman, lest the development continue to spread through the neighborhood to the south.
Containment worked in the case of the Soviet Union -- it's time to put Milwaukeean George F. Kennan's policy to work in the Upper East Side, before UWM and its appurtenances spill over the street like freshmen at a keg party when the cops come calling.

--Michael Horne
[*In an earlier report I called it a three story, high-density student housing project. -- Ed.]



[Update 19 December 2006: Robert Powers, who runs a blog called "Milwaukee Streets" has a nice set of photographs of the houses on the flicker website, with links to his other works, including photos of vacant city lots where houses once were. What shall replace them? Powers also writes with insight about the urban condition, and senses that a large portion of the northwest side of Milwaukee might be destined for ghettodom if something isn't done soon. Alas, the postwar era neighborhoods are feeling their ages, and they lack the intrinsic vitality of their earlier counterparts. --Ed.]