Plankinton Mansion’s fate rebuilt preservation efforts
The house whose demolition — 37 years ago this week — led to stronger historic preservation rules in Milwaukee was never lived in by the woman for whom it was built.
In the 1880s, meatpacking magnate John Plankinton decided to build a castle for his daughter, Elizabeth, near his home on what is now Wisconsin Ave.
It was supposed to be a wedding present: Elizabeth was engaged to sculptor Richard Henry Park, the artist who had made the statue of George Washington now standing across from the Milwaukee Public Library.
There was just one problem: As Milwaukee architect and historian H. Russell Zimmerman wrote in a story in The Milwaukee Journal on Feb. 18, 1968, Park ran off and married a dancer from Minneapolis instead. Elizabeth Plankinton, the story goes, took one look inside the completed, Romanesque stone mansion at what would now be 1492 W. Wisconsin Ave. and decided she was never going to live there.
(She never did. Plankinton, who never married, died in Switzerland in 1923 at age 70.)
In 1896, the mansion was bought by Margaret A. Johnston, the widow of cookie-maker Johnston Co.’s Hugh L. Johnston. After she died, the property was sold, in 1910, to the Milwaukee Knights of Columbus to become the fraternal organization’s clubhouse.
In 1965, the property was included in a downtown urban renewal district, and it was acquired by the Milwaukee Redevelopment Authority in January 1974.
The following year, the city transferred ownership of the land to Marquette, while the Redevelopment Authority continued to lease the building to the Knights. Marquette’s long-term plan for the site included student housing or a new student union — neither of which, university officials said, the mansion was suited for.
In other words, the clock was ticking.
By July 1978, with the Knights’ lease expiring and Marquette anxious to get on with its expansion plans, preservationists began marshaling their forces to save the building — and seeking stronger tools to save the city’s history.
“We’ve had a lot of demolition,” James Boerner, chairman of the city Landmarks Commission, told The Journal in a July 13, 1978, story. “The (existing) landmarks legislation does not protect any building, does not have any public powers.”
Exhibit A was Blessed Virgin of Pompeii Catholic Church, the Italian community landmark that was torn down in 1967, just after it received historic designation from the commission.
A group called Wisconsin Heritages began lobbying the city, saying it was seeking funds to save at least part of the Plankinton mansion.
Over Marquette’s objections, the Redevelopment Authority kept the property in play by extending the Knights of Columbus’ lease through the end of 1978.
But the city also had a legal commitment to Marquette to tear down the building, so, a month later, the authority voted in favor of demolition.
In response, Wisconsin Heritages filed for a temporary restraining order blocking demolition, and in November 1978, a federal judge agreed, ordering the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to determine if the building was worth relocating.
“We got just what we wanted,” Daniel Steininger, attorney for Wisconsin Heritages, told The Journal’s Ron Elving in a story published Nov. 24, 1978. “Marquette will have to move to lift the injunction. The burden is squarely on them, and that’s just where we want it.”
Not long after, a possible rescuer emerged: Douglass Cofrin — owner of classical music station WFMR-FM and, later, re-launcher of Milwaukee Magazine — told The Journal in a story published Jan. 10, 1979, that he was considering buying the Plankinton mansion and moving it.
The challenge: The cost of moving the building was estimated at $1 million to $1.5 million.
Although HUD backed saving the building at a new site, no federal money was offered. And Cofrin — by then in the middle of an unsuccessful run for a U.S. Senate seat — hadn’t been able to put together “the kind of financial package he had in mind” for the project, The Journal reported on Jan. 14, 1980.
Facing an end to the court order blocking demolition, 12 Milwaukee aldermen asked federal Judge Myron L. Gordon for an extension to give them time to determine if the city’s condemnation powers could be used to save the mansion.
But when the city attorney’s office ruled that the city could save the building only by taking ownership and keeping it on its current site, the fight lost steam. On June 6, 1980, Gordon let his restraining order lapse.
Wisconsin Heritages continued making last-ditch pitches, offering $100,000 to bring the mansion up to code even as artifacts were being removed from the building for safekeeping. And the Common Council scheduled a vote for Oct. 14, 1980, on another plan: The city would condemn the property and spend $1.3 million to preserve the building as a museum.
Then, on Oct. 11, a Saturday, a bulldozer pulled up to the Plankinton mansion and sheared off the 90-year-old building’s front porch and carriage entrance.
Opponents of the weekend deconstruction pointed fingers at the Redevelopment Authority and the Department of City Development, saying the agencies jumped the gun. It didn’t help when the Milwaukee Sentinel’s Avi Lank reported on Oct. 15 that the company handling the demolition didn’t actually receive the permits until two days after the work began.
The demise of the Plankinton mansion
spurred efforts for tougher protections for historic buildings in the city. In June 1981, the Common Council approved a strengthened historic preservation ordinance that required owners who want to raze or significantly modify landmarks to get approval from the city’s Historic Preservation Commission.
After the city had delayed its plans, Marquette put those plans on hold itself for a few years before starting work on a new student union at the former Plankinton site. The Alumni Memorial Union, 1422 W. Wisconsin Ave., opened in 1990.