Back in early March of this year, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Sam Woods on WUWM’s popular Lake Effect program. The main focus of the conversation was my newly released book, Milwaukee in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Cream City’s Architectural Geology. I explained that the building materials on display in the city’s great landmark structures had their own amazing stories to tell about many different chapters in our planet’s long history.
In that regard, there was enough material for a discussion of many hours, let alone fifteen minutes. For example, there was the fact that Milwaukee County’s locally quarried bedrock formed when this area was located thirty degrees south of the equator. And there’s the interesting issue of the city’s famous cream brick and its weird geochemistry; and the point that we have skyscrapers clad in rock three-and-a-half billion years old, and others faced in ornamental terra-cotta made with ancient coal-swamp soil.
So, after the show, Sam and I started to explore the possibility of a continuing series. And ultimately we recorded a pilot program. A tentative series title, “What Milwaukee Is Made Of,” was assigned, and that first segment, on the famous Pfister Hotel and its Wauwatosa Dolostone exterior, aired on September 10th. And, since Milwaukee Public Radio does an excellent job of providing free podcasts online, the episode can now be found on our new series webpage. Check it out!
Now that the first show has aired, we’re discussing how the format can be refined, and what to focus on next. Keep a lookout for the second installment this October. And in the meantime, don’t forget that you can easily obtain a print or digital copy of Milwaukee in Stone and Clay from your local bookstore or online, including directly from the publisher.
