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Maybe it’s a reach, but I see a parallel between how William H. Meyer – who tapped Pabst’s favorite architect Otto Strack to design his Grand Avenue home at 3121 W. Wisconsin Ave. – made his fortune and what his former home has recently become.
The 1899 house, long ago converted to office space, is now home to Uplifting Mansion, where owners Deanna Singh and her husband Justin Ponder aim to use the space as a means of contributing to the proverbial rising tide that lifts all boats.
There's meeting and event space, a community art gallery, studio space for four artists-in-residence, office space for nonprofits that help other nonprofits, a co-working space for social entrepreneurs and more.
“We've been treating it very much like a gift and really trying to be good stewards of the space,” says Singh, “and so we've held a lot of community meetings, (and) every floor represents one of our core values.”
Meyer was a co-owner of the Milwaukee Tug Boat line, founded by his father-in-law, and as we all know, tug boats may be small but they work to guide much bigger vessels and help keep a harbor – a community of ships – functioning.
Uplifting Mansion can be seen as a tug boat-like effort to boost its near West Side neighborhood.
What’s interesting about the house is that from Wisconsin Avenue, where you’d expect to see an elaborate facade, there is a rather workaday vibe. That’s because the house faces west, looking directly at its neighbor instead of boasting to passersby.
Again, it’s easy to draw a parallel with the community focus of Uplifting Mansion.
The mansion makes its Doors Open Milwaukee debut this year when the annual event returns on Sept. 27-28. You can find complete event details here.
Before we talk more about Uplifting Mansion, let’s go back and look at the roots of its home.
Who was William H. Meyer?
William H. Meyer was born in Kolenfeld, Germany in 1848 and arrived in the United States in 1867.
“Yes and no was my entire English vocabulary when I reached Milwaukee,” Meyer recalled later in an interview.
“He arrived in the city in the afternoon and next morning he obtained a situation as a clerk in a general store on Winnebago Street,” wrote the Milwaukee Journal, which added that every evening at the close of the work day, Meyer would take home paperwork from the store and use it, along with an English dictionary he purchased, to study the language.
Meyer married Sophie Starke, whose father Christopher also arrived in Milwaukee from Kolenfeldt (Hanover) in 1853 along with his brothers Conrad and Henry, with whom he entered the tug boat business.
Meyer became a co-owner of the Starke’s Milwaukee Tug Boat line and was also involved in the Milwaukee Worsted Cloth Company and, along with the Starkes, the Sheriffs Manufacturing Company.
Doing quite well for himself and his family – which included five sons and three daughters – Meyer tapped one of the city’s top architects, albeit one who had already left the city, to design his new Grand Avenue house.
Otto Strack, architect
Best known for designs like the Pabst Theater, the Pabst Brewery buildings and the Joseph Kalvelage and William Goodrich houses in Milwaukee, Otto Strack was born in Roebel, Germany in 1857, according to a city historic designation report.
While his mother, Emma Unger, the daughter of a well-known musician, Strack’s father August was scion of a family of foresters going back at least five or six generations. So perhaps it was no surprise that young Otto learned carpentry and joinery after completing high school in Weimar.
Moving to Hamburg to join his mother who had relocated there following the death of her husband, Strack then learned blacksmithing and masonry, ultimately studying at a building school in the port city. He continued his studies at polytechnical schools in Vienna and Berlin and earned a degree in 1897.
In 1881, he emigrated to Chicago, working as an architect and engineer for a building contractor before opening his own practice five years later. He did work in Chicago, but also in Milwaukee for the Hansen Hop & Malt Company and Romadka Brothers.
Strack relocated to Milwaukee in 1888 and soon after was hired by Pabst Brewing Company as its supervising architect. In addition to designing brewery buildings, Strack’s tied houses are often easy to spot for the castellated rooflines.
He also drew buildings for Pabst in New York, including casinos in Harlem and at Coney Island and the Pabst Grand Central Restaurant at Columbus Circle, the report added.
In 1892, Strack once again went into business for himself, and Pabst became a client.
His 1895 Pabst Theater design to replace the burned Nunnemacher Grand Opera House/Stadt Theater that previously stood on the site was revolutionary for having what is believed to be the first (or among the first) cantilevered balcony without posts in the world, leaving a clear view for folks sitting beneath it.
By the time Strack was hired by Meyer, he’d likely already moved to New York, where he took a job working for the George A. Fuller Construction Company (where Carl Barkhausen of Crane & Barkhausen would also work for a time early in the 20th century), though his Milwaukee office remained open at least as late as 1900.
At Fuller, Strack worked on office buildings and skyscrapers, including a slim 1907 12-story loft building with a gently curved bay running nearly top to bottom that is located in what is now the Ladies Mile Historic District at 11 West 17th Street.
During this time, Strack also owned and ran the New York Realty Corporation.
Meyer Mansion
The house he designed for Meyer was a rarity for Strack, whose work often referenced Germanic and almost Medieval styles. This one was a Jacobean-inspired English Revival home, which was popular in the U.S. in the 1890s.
A permit was obtained to build the estimated $12,000 house on May 1, 1899, with another permit, this one for a $2,500 horse stable, issued on Nov. 23, 1899.
Even this city historic designation report – the home, along with its flanking neighbors was not landmarked after an unpleasant battle – refers to the Wisconsin Avenue side of the house as the front.
“The front façade is symmetrical, with front gabled ends,” it notes. “The first floor of the gable ends contains a window bay with three double-hung windows with three transoms.”
However, walk to the west side of the house today and it seems possible that it was intended to be the main entrance. Not only is it more attractive, with its projecting first-floor apse-like bay, but the staircase behind the door is the grandest in the home.
However, a grainy 1958 photo shows a wooden porch at the Wisconsin Avenue side entrance and another even older photo (pre-wooden porch) shows an ornate carved stone door surround with sidelights. Each of these gave that facade a much more "front entrance" look.
At some point, however, all of that was removed or covered over with a central entrance and staircase tower that was initially glassier but is now pretty much all brick.
Regardless, William Meyer didn’t get to enjoy the house all that long.
Meyer died in the lobby of the Markham Hotel in Denver in September 1906 during a business trip.
On his way to meet with his brother A. H. in Silverton, Colorado to consider buying into a mining property, Meyer walked from Union Depot to the hotel, where he fell to the floor dead before he even made it to the front desk.
“As he approached the counter to register he fell dead to the floor without a word,” the Journal wrote. “He had not stated his name to anyone but was identified through cards and letters found on his person.
“Through the negligence of the authorities at Denver or because of some mistake in the transmission of dispatches, the relatives of Mr. Meyer in Milwaukee were not notified of his death by telegraph and their first intimation that anything was wrong was received from a representative of the Journal."
Meyer’s son Fred Fred told the newspaper that when his father left Milwaukee two days earlier he seemed to be in excellent health.
“Denver dispatches say his death is ascribed either to the too strenuous walk from the depot, or to the high altitude, or both,” the Journal wrote.
Meyer was 58. His body was returned to Milwaukee and the funeral held, as was common, at home, before Meyer was buried at Forest Home Cemetery.
Meyer’s wife Sophie, however, remained in the house the rest of her life. She died in 1931 at the age of 74 and the house appears to have sat vacant for a few years before the family began renting it to the American Legion Milwaukee Post No. 1, which had been created in 1923 by merging 15 smaller posts.
Post-Meyers
“Remodeling work has been started on the Meyer homestead by Milwaukee Post No. 1, which has occupied the building under a rental agreement that gives an option to buy the property at a future date,” the Journal reported in April 1938.
The paper added that the former home had 18 rooms and had been unoccupied for nearly two years.
“Work will include taking out some partitions to create larger club rooms and installations of lounge rooms on the first and second floors. Dedication will be held next fall when work is completed,” the Journal noted.
“One of the methods of raising funds for the project will be the sale of 260 bricks in the Moorish fireplace, a feature of the old mansion. Each brick sold will be inscribed with the name of the purchaser, according to Charles G. Plows, chairman of the finance committee.”
By July that year, the post was ready to open and more than 400 people attended the dedication. The home had apparently been purchased in the meantime by the post.
The sale of the bricks at $10 apiece raised $2,200 for the project, though it’s unclear whether the inscribed bricks remained in place or were removed. At some point, however, they were taken away as they’re not inside anymore today.
Speaking at the dedication, Racine’s Lawrence H. Smith, department commander of the legion, called the place “one of the finest legion houses in Wisconsin.”
The Journal noted that Smith also said that “Milwaukee posts are luckiest in the state because they can purchase beautiful old homes rather than go to the expense of building new ones.”
In 1941, the post did more remodeling. In addition to tearing down the 1899 stables, they removed walls in the “basement tavern,” built new boiler rooms, removed a staircase and built a new one connecting to the first floor and installed new bathrooms.
Those 1940s bathrooms, with their classic tiles of the era, remain today.
By 1958, the post had decided to move to a new memorial hall in a remodeled machine shop at 4030 N. 34th St. that had a large hall, a small hall and a cocktail lounge, and listed the old Meyer house for sale.
It was sold to the Milwaukee Insurance Center, which created offices in the building, and that’s been the story of the building ever since: offices.
Most recently it was owned by a property management company that at some point had about 35 people working there.
These days, there are hardwood floors inside and some wood paneling around the windows that could be original, as the brass fixtures sure look period. But beyond that and the old staircase, which seems likely to have originally been more open, there is little inside that looks original.
The right buyers
And perhaps that’s OK, because the former home and meeting space is serving a new purpose now and the way the mansion exists today suits that use.
When she first saw it, Deanna Singh thought it was perfect.
“I saw this place and I was like, ‘oh, this is amazing, right? Really, this is literally everything on my (wish) list.’
“I'm like, ‘are you kidding me? There's no way. Oh my gosh, we're going to own that building’.”
So, she and her husband made an offer. One of about a hundred received by the sellers.
“The gentleman who owned the space called me and he's like, ‘I know this is unorthodox,’ and we just talked. He goes, ‘I'm going to sign your offer.’ Starts printing my offer and signing it. Then I called my husband. I'm like, ‘So I did a thing’ (laughs), and that's how it happened.
“I think there were a couple of things,” Singh says of why their offer was selected. “I think one is that they always wanted this to be some kind of a community space, but that wasn't part of their portfolio. They're property managers and really good at what they do, but that just wasn't their thing.”
But it certainly is Deanna and Justin’s thing.
They’ve been hosting all kinds of events and meetings and there are the four artists-in-residence, whose work adorns the lower level art galleries. There is that space for nonprofits helping other nonprofits and the social entrepreneurs co-working space.
Even the AirBnB up at the top – which is pretty amazing, furnished by BC Modern – is a teaching tool for the couple’s two teenage children, who helped stock it and who manage it.
The joy of it all is clear on Singh’s face as she walks through, talking about each floor, each room, each event that’s been held there and as she explains what’s coming, including a big new deck out back.
“I think that the former owners really wanted to have somebody who they knew would take care of the space,” she says.
They found the right buyers.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press. A fifth collects Urban Spelunking articles about breweries and maltsters.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has been heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
