Bay View ‘puddler’s cottage’ gets temporary historic designation
A 19th-century Bay View house has been granted temporary historic preservation over concerns about how the building could be altered by its new owners.
The small house, at 2530 S. Superior St., is among seven neighboring homes that could be declared the Puddlers’ Cottages Historic District under a separate proposal pending before the Milwaukee Historic Preservation Commission.
That historic district proposal will be considered by the commission at its March 18 meeting.
On Wednesday, the commission granted temporary designation just for the one home.
Temporary designation, which lasts up to 180 days, requires city review for exterior changes while the commission also considers permanent designation — which needs Common Council approval.
The designations are sought by Bay View resident Joe Paterick, who had hoped to buy and restore the 2530 S. Superior St. house and its backyard carriage barn.
Instead, the property was sold to an investors group that plans to remodel the house and flip it — and apparently build another home on the 10,500square-foot lot, Paterick told commission members.
The property’s new owners, brothers Chris and Ryan Konicek told the commission they plan to renovate the house according to historic standards.
They also said they haven’t yet decided the carriage house’s fate, and have no active plans to develop a second house.
But, Chris Konicek said, “It is a large enough lot that you could develop it.”
Paterick’s petition for temporary designation was supported by Carlen Hatala, a city historic preservation planner.
The seven houses on the east side of South Superior Street between East Russell Avenue and East Ontario Street are Bay View’s only intact row of puddlers’ cottages, Hatala told commission members.
Such cottages reflect the characteristics of Bay View’s late 19th-century roots as a neighborhood for people who worked at Bay View Rolling Mills, according to Paterick’s petition.
The mill’s employees included “puddlers” — workers who formed molten iron into wrought iron materials.
Bay View Rolling Mills, which operated at South Superior Street and East Russell Avenue, was the site of an 1886 strike that led to the deaths of seven workers after state troops fired into a crowd, according to the Encyclopedia of Milwaukee.
Also, the cottages are “the earliest form of workforce housing as an architectural type,” Hatala said.