Well, depending on where you live and what your taste in architecture is, you may not agree with my assessment that Milwaukee’s seat of civic government is the most beautiful building of its kind in the world. But I’ve seen and researched quite a few others of its type, and I’ve found no other edifice that’s quite so grand, quite so lovely, or quite so geologically interesting. Or, for that matter, quite so visually weird—if one takes into account the mind-bending geometry of its amazing interior.
Accordingly, I was delighted when series host Sam Woods suggested that the third installment of our “What Milwaukee Is Made Of” series should be devoted to the Cream City’s 1895 City Hall. This episode originally aired on WUWM’s acclaimed Lake Effect program on Monday, December 16, 2024. And now it’s available as a free-access podcast.
All that said, I have to issue one blooper alert. When Sam asks me about one of City Hall’s building materials—Ohio’s Berea Sandstone—I mention that it dates to the Mississippian subperiod of the Carboniferous. While for most of my career that age assignment was considered correct, in recent years the Berea has been reinterpreted as belonging instead to the final chapter of the preceding period, the Devonian.
As geologic dating goes, it’s quite a slight change—the gentlest downward nudge across the Mississippian-Devonian boundary line. Still, I’m an accuracy freak and I’m really irked that I didn’t just say “Uppermost Devonian.”
At least I can console myself with the fact that I have the revised age cited correctly in both Milwaukee in Stone and Clay and its predecessor, Chicago in Stone and Clay. So why did I get it wrong for the taping of this show? Perhaps because old understandings die hard. Or perhaps it was the fact I had experienced a major PC meltdown and frustrating software reinstallation process just a few hours before doing the interview, with all sorts of glitches continuing up to the time we did the show.
In any event, I am still meditating to calm myself down after my techno-troubles. And the mantra I’m using: “Berea Sandstone . . . Uppermost Devonian . . . Om . . . Berea Sandstone . . Uppermost Devonian . . . Om.” It really gets me in touch with my inner stratigrapher.
To listen to the new City Hall segment—and to its two predecessors (on the Burnham Block/Cream City Brick and the Pfister Hotel/Wauwatosa Dolostone)—pay a visit to the Milwaukee Public Radio webpage devoted to our series.