Wisconsin Gas Light Building

skyscraper
art-deco
WI
Milwaukee

About the Wisconsin Gas Light Building in Milwaukee
Architect and team
Architectureal style
Spaces and uses
Structure and materials

The Wisconsin Gas Light Building is an Art-deco skyscraper designed by Eschweiler & Eschweiler and built between 1929 and 1930 in Milwaukee, WI.

Wisconsin Gas Light Building is not the only name you might know this building by though. It is common for companies to want to attach their names to iconic buildings when they move in, or for the general public to come up with nicknames, and this one is no exception. The Wisconsin Gas Light Building is also known, or has been known as, Gas Light Building, or Milwaukee Gas Light Building.

Its precise street address is 626 East Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, WI. You can also find it on the map here.

The building has been restored 2 times over the years to ensure its conservation and adaptation to the pass of time. The main restoration works happened in 1950 and 2005.

Building's timeline

Construction begins

1929

Construction completed

1930

Restoration

1950

Restoration

2005

years ago

2024

1950 - Restoration.
2002 to 2005 - Restoration. The architect in charge was Eppstein Uhen Architects.

Architect and team

Eschweiler & Eschweiler was the architecture firm in charge of the architectural design.

Architectural Style

The Wisconsin Gas Light Building can be categorized as an Art-deco building.

The Art Deco movement flourished during the 1920s and 1930s, with many historians marking the outbreak of World War II as its final decline. Even though a couple of decades might not seem as much, the Art Deco movement had a great impact on architecture, and it's widely represented in many American cities due to the development boom that happened during that time.

Art Deco marked the abandonment of traditional historicism and the embracement of modern living and the age of the machine. In architecture, that meant leaving behind the ornaments of Beux-Arts and Neo-Gothic buildings and instead favoring simplicity and visual impact through geometric shapes, clean lines, and symmetrical designs. Ornaments were still an important part of the design, but they became bold and lavish, and were often inspired by ancient cultures or industrial imagery, instead of nature.

The Wisconsin Gas Light Building was completed in 1930, right when the Art Deco movement was at its peak, so it kind of went with the trend at that time.

Spaces & Uses

The Wisconsin Gas Light Building reaches an architectural height of 250ft (76.2m). It has a total of 22 floors, 20 above ground and 2 basements, which combined offer a total of 133,989 sqf (12,448m²) of usable space.

In regards to parking space, the building has a total of 213 spots available, which roughly equals 11 spots per floor (above ground), or one parking spot per every 624 sqf (58m²) of usable space.

Ever since opening its doors to the public in 1930, the Wisconsin Gas Light Building has mainly been used as Commercial space.

Materials & Structure

The Wisconsin Gas Light Building uses a frame structure made of steel columns and concrete slabs.

A frame structure uses a combination of beams and columns to sustain the building's weight. The walls in this case are non-load bearing, which allows for more flexibility when distributing the interior spaces.

The facade is non-load bearing either, as it is common in frame structure type buildings.

From an aesthetic point of view, the facade features bricks of different tones, with the darker ones being used at the bottom to create the illusion of the building being taller than it actually is.

Other materials found at the Wisconsin Gas Light Building include, marble, used for the cladding the first two and a half floors of the building, cream city brick, a light yellow colored brick made of clay from the area was used to crown the building and complete the dark to light gradient that the facade fetures as you look at it from bottom to top, terracotta, used to incorporate some art-deco ornamentation to the facade at certain levels, and copper, used to adorn the spandrels with typical art deco motives.