100 E Wisconsin Ave

Summary

100 East Building
100 East Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, Milwaukee County
Architect: Clark, Tribble, Harris, & Li
Builder: M.A. Moretenson Construction Company

The 100 East Building is significant as the best and most important example of a Post-Modern building within downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. This architectural style, popularized in the late 1970s, celebrated contextualism, allusionism, and ornamentalism. Architects working within this mode sought to return to traditional complexities of design they felt Modernist buildings did not provide. The popularity of Post-Modernism correlated with the building boom of the 1980s that increased the amount of office space in downtowns like Milwaukee. Architectural firms across the United States began to specialize in corporate and office design, working closely with speculative developers to create unique buildings that would attract high-end tenants. Historian Carole Rifkind observed in 2001, “The postwar era’s taste for cool Modernist design grew to a voracious appetite for Post-Modernist novelty and eye appeal,” and the novel creations became as much of a commodity as the office furnishings that filled them.

100 East Building was one of several buildings constructed in downtown Milwaukee in the 1980s. It directly and intentionally refers to the established Flemish/German Renaissance Revival architectural context of Milwaukee, specifically the 1892 Pabst Building and the historic 1895 City Hall sited two blocks to the north. The novel design contextualized the historic architectural language of the former Pabst Building and old City Hall through its exaggerated stylistic references. The stone arches on the base of the exterior recall those of the Pabst Building, with the large center arches being the same diameter as those on the former building. The scale of 100 East is also a feature of its Post-Modernist design, enlarging the fourteen-story Pabst building both vertically and horizontally by creating a larger footprint. At the top of the building, the pyramidal roof behind shaped parapets, the concrete finials, the faux lightning rods, and the cupola all exhibit an exaggerated ornamentalism seen on historic, older examples of the Flemish/German Renaissance Revival style. The 100 East Building references its historic context more overtly than other buildings.

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