In recent years I’ve become a dedicated watcher of video series documenting the hard work required to renovate or restore a variety of old properties, from old stone cowsheds in the Italian Alps to a 500-year-old thatched cottage in the Cotswolds.

While I can’t see myself ever taking on something like that, as a lover of historic buildings, I’m thankful that there are people with the skills, the drive, the time, the energy and the wallet to restore neglected old gems.

X

X

That’s why I have high hopes for a place that’s currently on the market, listed as active but with an accepted offer (this real estate stuff can be complicated), in the Cold Spring Park neighborhood.

What it is

The 1902 house – roughly 3,000 square feet on a 7,400-square-foot lot – at 2810 W. McKinley Blvd. was designed by architects Henry Messmer & Son and is a beauty, with gorgeous woodwork throughout. 

You can see the listing here – the house is assessed at $191,000 – and you’ll be able to tell from the photos that whoever buys this place will have their work cut out for them. 

However, if you’ve ever done a home tour in neighboring Concordia, you’ll also know that the rewards for doing this work can be considerable. As they say, “they don’t build ‘em like this anymore.”

X

Cold Spring Park – like its higher-profile neighbor to the south, Concordia – is packed with really beautiful residential architecture, much of it designed by some of the most respected architects of the early 20th century (like Messmer & Son).

That’s why the Cold Spring Park Historic District is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, the Wisconsin Historical Society’s state register and is designated by the City of Milwaukee, too.

The Cold Spring Park story

The district runs from 27th to 34th Streets, along McKinley Boulevard, which is part of a system to create landscaped boulevards that often connected parks and sought to restrict traffic. Some of the boulevards (Newberry and Washington) were designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. The city’s boulevard plan inspired Charles Whitnall to expand it county-wide as part of the parks system.

X

The earliest development at Cold Spring Park was of the eponymous, where horse racing events were held, as were some of the early Wisconsin State Fairs (which at that time moved around to various cities in the state). Abraham Lincoln spoke there in 1859.

Once residential development got going at the dawn of the 20th century, it proceeded rapidly and by 1910, the neighborhood was pretty full, with the most unique architect-designed houses – like 2810 W. McKinley – on the eastern end and further west, the houses were much closer together and were of a more repetitious duplex design, but still quite nice.

“Characteristic of boulevard development between 1890 and 1915, the district is distinguished from the adjacent neighborhoods by a landscaped esplanade down the middle of the roadway,” notes the NRHP survey form. 

X

“The residences are large, most architect-designed, and exhibit a high level of craftsmanship and materials. To the north, south and west of the district, the residential fabric changes in character to smaller houses, on smaller lots, with less attention to architectural design, details and craftsmanship.”

“The list of architects who designed houses in the district reads like a who’s who of German-American architecture firms in Milwaukee: Henry Messmer & Son, John Menge, Jr., Fred Graf, Otto C. Uehling, Charles F. Ringer, Charles Tharinger, Julius Leiser and Charles Holst, and Herman W. Buemming and Gustave A. Dick,” adds the City’s designation study. “The clients they designed these houses for were also of German extraction. As a matter of fact, a survey of city directories reveals that during its peak from 1900 to 1930, the district was overwhelmingly German-American in its ethnic composition. 

X

“Most of the residents whose economic mobility allowed them to live great distances from the job centers in what was considered to be a suburban setting at the time. Downtown was easily reached by the electric streetcar line that had been in operation since 1894. Among the residents who lived in the district were a number of businessmen who were presidents of their own small companies.”

X

Keller House

This was the case at 2810, which was designed in the Craftsman style house for 42-year-old Frank C. Keller, co-owner of Henes & Keller, which made bottling equipment.

Keller was born in Germany in 1860 and married Bertha Becker in Milwaukee in 1888. The couple had a son, Erwin, in 1897, at about the same time that Henes & Keller got started.

Soon after the company secured a bottle-filling machine patent for what appears to have been a design by Keller and later improved upon by his partner, fellow German immigrant John Henes Sr.

Henes was a brewmaster at Leisen & Henes Brewing in Menominee, Michigan, and the two set up shop in the steam laundry building, which survives at 419 W. Vliet St., later moving to a single-story building on 19th Street between Clybourn and St. Paul, the footprint of which is now beneath I-94.

By 1903 they were making, among other bottling equipment, Henes’ patented revolving bottle-filler, which quickly became popular in the beer industry because it allowed beer to be bottled from barrels without losing carbonation, thanks to an air pump.

The Kellers lived on 17th Street between Walnut and Vine before building their new house on the fashionable McKinley Boulevard.

X

X

Though it was used as a duplex beginning sometime between 1919 and 1923, they built the new house as a single-family home, which explains why there is no separate entrance to the upper flat, other than a cramped back service entrance. 

However, Keller didn’t get to enjoy the house very long, as he died there of tuberculosis at the age of 46 in 1906.

It seems likely that Keller’s passing was the impetus for Henes moving the company, which kept Keller’s name on the letterhead, up to Menominee, where he lived and where it occupied a building close to his brewery.

X

X

Later, Henes’ son, John Jr. patented an improvement to his father’s bottle-filler and also ran the company after the elder Henes’ death, until it was sold in the 1940s.

In 1913, Bertha died, leaving an estate worth $90,000 and real estate valued at $20,000 to her son Erwin, who was still a minor.

However, provisions were made for him to get $5 a week spending money and enough to run his automobile until he came of age and guardians George Keller Sr. and Charles A. Orth were required to provide money for him to finish college.

By 1919, the estate was his and he listed the “beautiful modern residence” on McKinley Boulevard house for sale “at a bargain, way below cost of construction.”

X

Sadly, Erwin – long suffering from insomnia – died of an accidental overdose of sleeping pills in 1927, at the age of just 30, leaving his wife Irma Braun Keller a widow for the following 50 years.

Eraths, Maerkers and a Brumder

In 1923, the was for sale again and it is likely that this is when jeweler Charles Erath, arrived on the scene.

Born in Schwäbisch Gmünd, Germany, Erath opened his jewelery business on Walnut Street in 1888 – the same year he married Milwaukee-born Maggie Hagist – but later moved it into a building near 20th and Fond du Lac, where he remained until 1912. 

X

After some time living with his wife Maggie on 35th Street, the couple moved to McKinley, where they lived and where Charles continued to run his jewelry business.

Living upstairs in the late 1920s were the apparently unhappy couple of Leander J. Pierson, secretary and treasurer of LJ Pierson Minerals Co., and his wife Grace.

Although they were married in Duluth in 1922, by the early 1930s, Pierson filed for divorce claiming that Grace “was of a nagging and jealous disposition.”

However, she – by then living in Spokane and working as a radio singer – counter-sued claiming that he “beat her because she remonstrated with him for running a still in their home and imbibing too freely.”

The judge ruled in favor of Grace, giving her a cash settlement and custody of their 6-year-old son William.

By then, Hugo and Molly Maerker (aka Merker) had moved into the duplex.

Hugo was an interesting fellow.

Born in Milwaukee in 1862, Maerker at the age of 4 was sent with his elder brother Alexander (who was 6) to Europe to attend school.

He didn’t return to Milwaukee until he was 19 and he got a job at George Brumder’s well-known German-language publishing company, working in the book division.

In 1892, Hugo married the boss’ daughter, Ida Brumder, which one might think would be a solid career move, especially after partnering to give George some grandchildren. But that only works if you don’t get divorced a decade later.

By 1907, Ida and the kids were living with the Brumders on Wisconsin Avenue and Hugo married Amalia Imse in Wayne, Michigan and took off to spend all or part of the next seven years traveling extensively in Europe.

X

Upon their return, surprise, Hugo did not have a job at Brumder publishing and instead turned to real estate, a business he appears to have operated out of his residence, much like his landlord Charles Erath.

However, in 1943 Erath died and five years later Hugo also passed away. Although Molly Maercker continued living in the house until around 1955, the whole place was soon occupied by Otto Luedke – about whom I found little – until the early 1960s before a number of owners and occupants came and went.

This coincided with a shift across the entire neighborhood, as the City of Milwaukee study report explains:

"The neighborhood began a slow decline in the late 1930s and 1940s as the large houses were converted into apartment buildings or rooming houses.

X

"The trend continued into the early 1970s as most of the houses became absentee-owned rental properties. In the mid-1970s an effort was begun to revitalize the street by the increasing number of owner-occupants attracted to McKinley Boulevard by its fine housing opportunities. These residents formed the Cold Spring Park Association to coordinate the area’s renewal."

Nowadays, a drive down McKinley Boulevard shows that many houses have gotten the tender loving care required to restore their luster.

The house today

How the house came to be in the condition it is today is sad.

“One lady owned it for I think the last 20-plus years, and she lost it to foreclosure,” says realtor Eric Muller of EXIT Elite Realty. “As far as I know, she did not rent out any of it.  

“She was living here. She'd been here a long time. It was full of stuff. The bank has had it ever since and they didn't really want to put any money into it because of the historic register (restrictions). No matter what they do, (they thought) it's going to be the wrong thing.”

X

Outside, though it’s obscured by overgrown shrubbery at the moment, there’s a lovely gentle curve on the facade at the first floor.

At the roofline is an elegant little dormer beside a larger one that’s supported by weighty brackets, and all three windows in the dormers have unique windows.

On the east side there are two projecting bays – one a single-level bay and the other rising up to the second floor.

There are dentils and other decorative details, too.

A small tiled foyer is the first sign that there’s a lot of attention to detail inside, but in need of a lot of love.

The exposed-beam reception hall is wainscoted, doors framed in matching wood and a staircase with a fluted column for a newel post. Up a few steps on the tripartite staircase is a built-in bench above which some elaborate and seemingly original wall paper survives.

X

It still looks like the reception space for a single family house. While the doors to the rest of the first-floor flat could be closed, it seems like an odd arrangement and I’d guess that the residents during the duplex era would’ve come to know one another quite well.

Just beyond the entry space is the library study with its built-in shelving, exposed beam ceiling and wainscoting that rises more than halfway up the walls.

X

Beyond that is a kitchen and off to the right are four rooms, including a small study tucked into the back corner.

There is a dining just off the kitchen, a sitting room with a fireplace with a tile surround and a parlor in front. The parlor and sitting room are demarcated by a pair of fluted columns.

A number of the rooms still have their pocket doors and there are hardwood floors throughout, though a former owner reports that some features were stolen many years ago, including beveled glass French doors.

Upstairs isn’t quite as nice, but there are still hardwood floors, some built-ins and a nice nook in the kitchen with a long wooden built-in bench and attractive arched opening. This room had been planned as a bedroom.

X

There are three more bedrooms up here, plus a small nursery at the front.

At the back, set off from the other rooms by door and with access to the lower floor via back stairs, was the maid's chamber. 

The attic is huge, with plenty of headroom to be finished out for extra space. 

There’s no denying this is a challenging property, but for someone with the desire for a beautiful old house and with the grit and determination to make it done, the bones appear to be here awaiting their savior.

X

“It really is beautiful, amazing,” says Muller. “I mean, it was at one time.”

For more stories on Milwaukee history and its built environment, check out these other Urban Spelunking stories.