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Property Location
Property Features
LOCALLY DESIGNATED 2/15/1983. HABS WI-256.
Last surveyed in 1984 with a map code 148-12 on a survey map of LUQS 392
Originally opened as the Second Ward Savings Bank. Is currently the home of the Milwaukee County Historical Center. Built of Bedford stone, steel, and concrete; the interior was finished in Italian marble.
This Beaux-Arts style bank building is one of the few structures in Milwaukee whose every elevation is as grandly detailed as a primary facade because important streets passed the site on all three sides. However, the portion of North Plankinton Avenue which ran along the east side of the building was closed years ago and is now part of a park that extends to the river. Since the 1960s, the building itself has housed the museum of the Milwaukee County Historical Society.
Each elevation has regularly spaced, Ionic half-column-fronted piers that front tall framed steel windows. A limestone balustrade crowns the former bank building. Its Renaissance style interior, largely intact, features a mezzanine encircling the central, two-story hall, formerly the bank lobby. Scagliola Ionic columns surround this atrium, echoing their exterior marble counterparts with plaster painted to resemble stone.
"This was the third building erected for the Second Ward Savings Bank, which later became a branch of the First Wisconsin National Bank. In 1965 the bank donated its elegant building to the Milwaukee County Historical Society. Today, former bank vaults again hold irreplaceable treasure--the records of Milwaukee's past." Pagel, Mary Ellen & Virginia A Palmer, University Extension The University of Wisconsin, Guides to Historic Milwaukee: Kilbourntown Walking Tour, 1967.
National And State Register Of Historic Places Listings
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