Bayfield Fish Hatchery project brings UWM preservation students national recognition

Article originally published by UW-Milwaukee’s School of Architecture & Urban Planning on UWM.edu. Read the full article

Article excerpt: Three students from the Historic Preservation Institute (HPI) have earned national recognition from the National Park Service, receiving honorable mention in the 2025 Charles E. Peterson Prize competition.

Under the guidance of Adjunct Assistant Professor Amanda Wagner, students Elizabeth Hanson, Michael Burrows, and Katie Tyree documented the historic Bayfield Fish Hatchery in Bayfield, Wisconsin.

Their award-winning set of measured drawings will be part of the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) collection at the Library of Congress, a distinction reserved for exemplary documentation of the nation’s architectural heritage.

The Peterson Prize is a national competition hosted annually by the National Park Service in partnership with the American Institute of Architects, the Athenaeum of Philadelphia, and the Association for Preservation Technology.

Read the full article on UWM.edu

Racine Masonic Center: Historic Landmark Heading to Absolute Auction, November 6, 2025

The Racine Masonic Center, also known as the Henry Durand House, is heading to absolute auction on November 6, 2025 — a once-in-a-lifetime chance for a new steward to take on one of Racine’s most distinctive landmarks.

Historical Significance

• Built in 1856 as an Italianate cream brick mansion for Henry Durand.

• In 1922, the Masons expanded it with an Egyptian Revival–style temple wing, featuring lotus and papyrus motifs, a winged Masonic symbol, and striking architectural details.

• Notable interior details historically included 11 fireplaces, Philippine mahogany woodwork, and even a Tiffany-glass dome in the shower.

• Listed as a contributing structure in the Southside Historic District, on both the National and State Registers of Historic Places.

A Landmark Property

• Over 43,000 square feet across four stories, with prime downtown Racine frontage and views of Lake Michigan.

• Vacant and adaptable for many uses: nonprofit, cultural center, business offices, mixed-use redevelopment, or another creative reimagining.

• Because this is an absolute auction, the property will sell on November 6 — no reserve, no minimum.

Incentives for Preservation

Owners pursuing appropriate rehabilitation could be eligible for:

• The Federal Historic Rehabilitation Tax Credit (20% of qualified expenditures).

• The Wisconsin Historic Tax Credit, (20% of qualified expenditures).

Together, these incentives can make preservation not only visionary but also financially viable.

Our Call to Action

The Wisconsin Trust for Historic Preservation is committed to helping this property find a conscientious owner — whether nonprofit, business, or civic-minded individual. We can offer guidance on:

• Navigating historic tax credits

• Preservation planning

• Building community support

Mark your calendar: November 6, 2025.

Learn more from the Wisconsin Historical Society listing and Founders 3 brokerage listing.

If you’re interested in helping secure this building’s future, or in learning more about how we can support preservation-minded buyers, please reach out. Let’s ensure the Racine Masonic Center begins its next chapter in caring hands.

Legislation Action Alert | Historic Tax Credit Repair Bill

Advocacy Action Alert

Please urge your State Lawmakers to SUPPORT the Historic Preservation Tax Credit “Repair” Bill 

Wisconsin’s Historic Preservation Tax Credit (HTC), initially created in 1989 to enhance the federal HTC credit, not only helps preserve Wisconsin’s architectural heritage, but it also plays a key role in driving economic development across the state. Under current state law, eligible historic preservation projects can receive a state income tax credit of 20 percent of the qualified rehabilitated expenditures up to $3.5 million.

However, several changes over the years to both the state and federal tax credit programs have created unintended confusion and eligibility obstacles that have delayed or “killed” historic rehabilitation projects, especially smaller projects.

The Historic Preservation Tax Credit “Repair” Bill (Assembly Bill 375 and Senate Bill 382), recently introduced at the State Capitol, would modernize the state’s HTC program by making the program more accessible, flexible, and impactful.

By aligning state policy with the needs of smaller-scale projects and accelerating project financing, this legislation will help ensure Wisconsin’s historic buildings remain vital community assets while driving economic revitalization. The bill recently received public hearings before two key legislative committees, but it has yet to be acted on by the full Legislature.

To build support for this important legislation and help push it over the finish line, please email your state lawmakers TODAY and urge them to SUPPORT the Historic Preservation Tax Credit “Repair” Bill.

How You Can Help

Contact your state lawmakers and urge them to SUPPORT the Historic Preservation Tax Credit “Repair” Bill (AB 375/SB 382). Simply cut-and-paste the linked sample email - feel free to personalize - and send to BOTH your state Representative and state Senator. Find local state legislators and lawmakers here. 

Thank you for advancing the Wisconsin Trust for Historic Preservation’s legislative advocacy efforts to enhance an already successful program – and ultimately help preserve historic assets, revitalize communities, and strengthen local economies across the state.

Bill Overview

Assembly Bill 375 / Senate Bill 382 aims to strengthen the state HTC and better serve historic structures that embody Wisconsin’s cultural heritage and community identity. These historic buildings are anchors of local character, tourism, and pride. By lowering administrative barriers and expanding eligibility, this legislation will allow more of these irreplaceable landmarks to be preserved for future generations. The bill will make the following changes to the current program:

• To qualify for the state credit under current law, a project’s qualified rehabilitation expenditure must be at least $50,000 AND meet the federal requirement that rehabilitation costs be greater than the building's adjusted basis. A building’s adjusted basis value can be quite large, pricing smaller projects out of the program. AB 375/SB 382 stipulates the federal requirement does NOT apply to projects seeking only the state tax credit, while maintaining the $50,000 threshold. This allows smaller projects, often found in distressed urban and rural areas, to qualify.

• Under current law, the state credit is claimed over five years, which aligns with the federal schedule. AB 375/SB 382 allows the entire state credit to be claimed in one year, increasing the impact of the tax credit and expediting return on investment. 

• Under current law, the state tax credit is capped at $3.5 million for all projects undertaken on the same parcel. AB 375/SB 382 retains the tax credit cap, but only within a rolling 10-year window. This will allow properties to take advantage of the state credit for future rehabilitation after a 10-year period expires.

Thank you for your continued support and advocacy.

Milwaukee's Ugliest Building: On the Path to Renewal

Join members of the Wisconsin Trust for Historic Preservation on Thursday, September 12 to learn more about the path to renewal for Milwaukee’s “Ugliest Building.”

The free event, co-hosted in partnership with the Historic Preservation Institute and MSOE, welcomes students and local preservation advocates for to an important discussion onsite.

 

Thursday, September 12
4:30 - 5:30 PM | Food, drinks, and socializing
5:30 - 6:00 PM | Presentation and building tours

Location: 324 N 15th St. Milwaukee, WI

Free to attend. No registration required

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Read the excerpt below for more on the building and the renewal effort:

A proposal to convert a long-vacant Menomonee Valley industrial building into apartments has received initial approval from city officials, but still faces an uphill battle.

The plan’s zoning change was approved on Monday, March 25 at a Milwaukee Plan Commission meeting, but the project faces several opponents including nearby businessowners and Milwaukee’s Department of City Development.

Building owner, Ken Breunig initially planned to convert the building into an office building, but at the commission hearing, he said the building’s structural issues prevent it from being able to handle heavy loads tied to office use.

Breunig instead wants to create around 45 apartments with monthly rents of $1,500 to $2,000. Marquette University students and staff would be the primary market, he said, along with people working in the valley and downtown.

The fire-damaged, vandalized building likely has three to five years before further deterioration makes it impossible to renovate, said Breunig, an engineer who’s redeveloped other historic buildings.

Read the full article: City panel gives initial approval to redevelopment of historic Menomonee Valley building

Saving Wisconsin's Sacred Places: Architectural Landmarks | Taliesin Workshop

You’re invited to join the WTHP at Taliesin for a compelling workshop on Wisconsin’s sacred places, held October 25-26.

Saving important Wisconsin architectural landmarks is a fundamental mission of the WTHP. Together with the HPI at UWM, the trust will be offering a two-day workshop on saving churches, temples, synagogues and other sacred places. Topics will be focused on the challenges of proper documentation along with strategies for retention and reuse of these landmark places in towns throughout Wisconsin.

AGENDA
The two-day workshop will include a combination of lectures and discussion groups. As a workshop, participants will engage in hands-on demonstrations of droning, building laser scanning, photogrammetry and object scanning. The Historic Tax Credit portion will include case studies of Wisconsin places that have effectively used tax credits for religious and nonprofit organizations.

The workshop will include an extensive exhibition of drawings and virtual reality devices for an advanced understanding of these landmarks. Site tours of local buildings and places will be included.

Review the full agenda and event information on the workshop homepage.

COSTS
This is intended to be a free workshop with drinks and some food provided. Participants can join for both days or only one with overnight accommodations independently.

The purpose of this workshop, like the other WTHP workshops, is to bring together a variety of preservation-minded people who can share knowledge and success stories with others and continue to make Wisconsin one of the best states for architectural heritage stewardship.

AUDIENCE
This workshop is intended to bring together a wide range of people involved in the art and business of saving architectural landmarks in small and mid-size towns. This year’s workshop will focus on great sacred places.

Local, state, and national organizations will come together to offer the very latest information on a variety of issues. All of them will be related to the struggles that owners, developers, architects, contractors, craftsmen, city officials, and others have with these important landmarks.

Review the full agenda and event information on the workshop homepage.

Architectural Artifacts | Iron and Metals

Join the WTHP and members of Milwaukee’s historical preservation community for the Historic Preservation Institute’s fourth workshop this season.

This workshop will exam several creative ways to deal with historic iron structures. The intent is to dispel the many myths associated with the obsolescence of iron structures, either as buildings or as engineering feats, particularly in brutal freeze-thaw northern climates.

Presentation #1 will document the struggle to save Milwaukee’s unique 1861 iron-clad building and its associated technical challenges. The second will cover innovative programming and design solutions for reusing massive, rusting engineering structures. Presentation #3 will show the saving, scanning, recreating, and reusing of the zinc fountain statue from the 1893World’s Fair in Chicago.

Lecture details:

RESTORING ESTORING THE IRON BLOCK BUILDING IRON BLOCK BUILDING

Scott Hoppenworth - Bond Façade Services

REUSINGTHE MKE RIVER SWING BRIDGE MKE RIVER SWING BRIDGE

John Everitt - Bray Architects

1893 CHICAGO EXPOSITION CHERUBS

Kendall Breunig, Sunset Investors
Amanda Wagner, Davenport Industries

Architectural Artifacts | Strategies for Finding & Reusing

Join the WTHP and members of Milwaukee’s historical preservation community to meet special guests Mike Jackson and H. Russell Zimmerman.

Mike Jackson, FAIA
National Building Arts Center, St. Louis, MO

Mike Jackson, FAIA, is a preservation architect in Springfield IL, where he was the chief architect for the Illinois Historic Preservation Agency for more than 30 years. He is the founding director of the APT Building Technology Heritage Library and the current board president of the National Building Arts Center.

This presentation will bring together the complementary artifact collection of the NBAC and the archives of the BTHL as research sources for the historic built environment.

H. Russell Zimmerman
Milwaukee’s Architectural Historian

H. Russell "Russ" Zimmerman is an accomplished author, historian, architect, founder of the Milwaukee-based Zimmerman Design Consultants and the Chairman of the Wauwatosa Landmark Commission from 1976-1980. Zimmerman currently resides in Wauwatosa.

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Topics for Discussion:

National Building Arts Center
The National Building Arts Center (NBAC) holds the largest collection of built environment artifacts in the Unites States. The core of the collection comes from buildings in St. Louis but also includes artifacts from New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, and other U.S. cities. This collection was assembled by Larry Giles over a 50-year period starting in 1973. The NBAC aims to be a leading lender of building artifacts from exhibition and research on the historic built environment. In 2023, the NBAC partnered with the Pulitzer Arts Foundation on a major exhibit - Urban Archaeology: Lost Buildings of St. Louis.

Apartment Building Technology Heritage Library
The Association for Preservation Technology (APT)’s mission is to advance appropriate traditional and new technologies to care for, protect, and promote the longevity of the built environment and to cultivate the exchange of knowledge throughout the international community. In 2010 APT launched the Building Technology Heritage Library (BTHL), an online archive of period architectural trade catalogs, builders’ guides, house plan books and related technical publications that are rarely found in traditional libraries. Since that time, the BTHL has grown to almost 15,000 publications from North America, Great Britain and Australia. These documents, as primary source materials, can assist in the preservation of the historic built environment and other research goals.

Jarob Ortiz comes home to Milwaukee document landmarks

Ansel Adams National Park Service Photographer, Jarob Ortiz Ortiz, was hosted by the Historic Preservation Institute of UW-Milwaukee’s School of Architecture & Urban Planning in November to photograph sites and landmarks.

As part of the visit, Jarob participated in a “meet and greet” reception on Wednesday, Nov. 15, where he presented his work at at the historic Pritzlaff Building in Milwaukee (315 N. Plankinton Ave.).

The support of Pritzlaff owner Kendall Breunig – who is passionate about Milwaukee history – and TechRender made the visit possible.

Ortiz visited his hometown of Milwaukee, WI in large part to document the Mitchell Park Conservatory domes for the Library of Congress and National Archives. He also documented other landmarks, too, including the Pritzlaff Building and the Pabst Mansion pavilion.

Ortiz is a 2013 graduate of the Milwaukee Area Technical College photography program and he graduated from Oak Creek High School in 2001.

Ortiz landed his gig at National Park Service’s Heritage Documentation Services – often called the “Ansel Adams Photographer” position because it mirrors, somewhat, the work that the famed lensman did for the Department of the Interior in the 1940s – in 2016, beating out about 4,000 other applicants.

Read more about Ortiz’s visit: "Ansel Adams photographer" Jarob Ortiz comes home to document landmarks - OnMilwaukee.com.

Preservation Post: Tillman Brothers Furniture Building (Leithold Music), La Crosse

Tillman Brothers Building looking northwest.  Circa 1911.  Courtesy of Murphy Library Special Collections, University of Wisconsin – La Crosse.

Frozen Music in the City of La Crosse!

What is now the Leithold’s Music building began its life in early 1890 as the Tillman Brothers Wholesale and Retail Furniture Store (est. 1859). Historic photos of this building show a wood storefront at ground level with a Queen Anne style transom in the center of the three bays.

The second-floor storefront featured an oriel window. Two cast iron columns extended from grade to the top of the second-floor windows. Windows on the third and fourth-floors are separated by a brick belt course. Fifth-floor features window openings defined by massive brick arches. Small arched attic windows, detailed brick corbeling, and a pressed tin sign capped the building. Later renovations removed the original storefront, cut down the sign board, and introduced a prism glass transom.

Leithold Music: Ownership and Modernization

In 1964, Leithold’s Music took ownership of the building and modernized the façade by covering the storefront transom with a large red sign, removed the second-floor windows and installed stucco panels, a new aluminum storefront replaced the bronze storefront, and the cast iron columns were clad with a yellow enamel metal panel system.

Leithold’s Music photo, courtesy of Marc Zettler, 2019

Leithold’s Music photo, courtesy of Marc Zettler, December 2021

Historic Restoration Work

This building was already contributing to the La Crosse Commercial Historic District and eligible for State and Federal Historic Tax Credits. An architecture and engineering study was completed in December 2019. Zettler Design Studio, LLC completed architectural drawings in August 2020. Construction started in early 2021 and is scheduled to wrap up this winter!

Façade restoration work included: a new aluminum storefront, new storefront lighting and vestibule on first floor, restoration of the historic prism glass transom, a new wood frame storefront on second floor, restoration of original windows on the third floor up to the attic; masonry restoration including tuckpointing, paint removal (to reveal the original brownstone), minor structural corrections; HVAC alterations to remove exhaust vents from window openings; rear window restoration on first through fifth floors and masonry restoration on the entire façade.

Preservation Post: Newburg Menswear Building, La Crosse WI

The past 133 years have brought a lot a change to the four buildings at 320-326 Pearl Street. Originally four separate structures, a series of purchases by the Newburg Menswear Company combined the buildings into the single structure that we see today. 

The buildings were originally known as the following: 

• 326 Pearl Street, historically the Gund Building, c. 1888 by Gund Brewing

• 324 Pearl Street, historically the Newburg Menswear Building, c. 1888 as residence and commercial space for Peter Newburg Company

• 322 Pearl Street, historically the Miller & Horne Building, c. 1889

• 320 Pearl Street, historically the Trane Building, c. 1889 by James A. Trane & Company. This was the beginnings of what would become The Trane Company, a global leader and innovator in Heating, Venting and Air Conditioning.

View looking south at Gund Building, 326 Pearl Street.  Circa 1892.  Courtesy of Murphy Library Special Collections, University of Wisconsin – La Crosse.

View looking south at Trane Buildings 320 Pearl Street.  Circa 1892.  Courtesy of Murphy Library Special Collections, University of Wisconsin – La Crosse.

View looking southwest at 324 Pearl Street.  Circa 1950s.  Courtesy of La Crosse Public Library Archives – La Crosse.

Expansion: The Gund Building

Historic photos of these four buildings show first floor wood storefronts with cast iron columns dividing the bays and recessed door alcoves. Each second floor is composed of brick broken up by double-hung windows capped by arched headers with limestone keystones and anchored by a lug stone sill. Each building a variation on the same theme. 

Circa 1896 Peter Newburg purchased the adjacent Gund Building and expanded his clothing store.  The brick party wall was removed on first floor and was replaced with a row of cast iron columns.  Sometime prior to 1921, the front of the two buildings was removed and replaced with a white terra cotta façade with what was probably a bronze storefront.  The building was again remodeled circa 1937 when the adjacent Miller and Horne Building was acquired at 322 Pearl Street.  A new Carrara Glass Storefront was installed over all three bays of the building to unify the store’s appearance.

View of 320-328 Pearl Street looking south.  Circa 1980s.  Courtesy of Murphy Library Special Collections, University of Wisconsin – La Crosse.

Expansion: The Trane Building

The final expansion occurred circa 1973 when the Newburg Menswear Company purchased the former Trane Building at 320 Pearl Street. With this purchase, the entire front façade was ‘modernized’.  A black metal slip cover was installed over the second floor, pre-cast concrete panels covered the storefront transoms and a new aluminum storefront with brown tiles was installed for the first floor storefront. 

The main entrance was moved to the center of the renovated façade.  The Newburg Menswear stayed in this location until 1986 when it closed its doors for good after 100 years in business.  After a couple years of vacancy, the building was used as a beauty school, but the school was gone by 2010 leaving most of the building vacant. Sometime around 2010 the metal slip cover was removed, revealing the once grand facades of the building.

320-328 Pearl St, photo courtesy of Marc Zettler, 2017

Historic Restoration work

A questionnaire was submitted to the WI Historical Society in early 2019 – the result was that the building’s historic status was changed to contributing in the La Crosse Commercial Historic District. Once approved, the building became eligible for State and Federal Historic Tax Credits. Architectural drawings were completed by Zettler Design Studio, LLC in late summer of 2019, construction commenced in late fall of 2019. 

Work Included

Front façade restoration of all 4 bays of the building, creation of 4 luxury apartments on second floor, roof terrace (for residents), rehabilitation of back and side facades, and “white box” preparation for a first floor commercial tenant.

Construction for Phase 1 - focusing on the exterior and new second floor apartments - was completed in November 2021! Phase 2 will be the build-out for a commercial tenant on first floor.

For more information, please reach out to Marc Zettler, of Zettler Design Studio. Marc served as Preservation Architect for the project.