A couple of years ago WUWM listener Kathy Kercheck asked, “What is the rusted metal object sitting across the Lindsey Bros Building on South 2nd Street.”
The object isn’t just rusted, it’s huge — about the size of one of those storage PODS. And it’s old.
We learned that it was a boiler and had been parked in the Walker’s Point neighborhood for several years. Developer and civil engineer Kendall Breunig salvaged the 18,000 pound boiler from the former Nunn Bush Shoe Company. It was one of the largest and longest-running leather shoe manufacturers in Milwaukee.
Breunig loved that history, but loves the boiler even more, especially its craftsmanship.
"It’s all 3/8 inch tube steel. There are 200, almost 300 tubes and they’re all symmetrical. There would have been some guy inside hammering those things into place — he probably swung a hammer in there for months on end,” Breunig said.
Breunig had plans for the symmetrical wonder. It would be transformed to a piece of sculpture.
When we spoke in 2021, Breunig already had a cement slab ready for it across from a historic building he owns on St. Paul: 150 W St Paul Ave in the little pocket park next to the Plankinton off-ramp from I-794.
But what would the sculpture be?
Listener Kathy Kercheck had a guess. “I’m going to take a stab and say a large wild animal,” she said.
Fast forward, well sort of, almost exactly 2 years and 4 months since the Bubbler Talk story aired, Kendall Breunig is about to unveil the sculpture.
He met me where a gigantic creature of some kind towered above us.
“You can see the body now,” Breunig said.
It stands on four legs fashioned of fused rusty steel tubes. Breunig points out the tail. “The tail is a block and tackle from an old warehouse building I bought in St. Francis,” he said.
And while Breunig originally thought his boiler looked more like a giant elephant, he shifted to location-appropriate creature.
“This boiler was “born in Milwaukee, elephants were never native to Milwaukee, but mastodons were. Both born in Milwaukee, it has to be a mastodon,” Breunig adds “Makes sense right?”
Right now its head and tusks are under wraps, but get ready to be surprised when they are unveiled. He’s especially proud of the tusks. A local blacksmith forged both the head and the 15-foot-long tusks.
“A few years ago there was a reality show with Milwaukee Blacksmiths and he did an octopus creating forged and tapered tentacles. That’s exactly what I needed for the mastodon. They’re six feet in diameter and taper down to solid points,” Breunig said.
Every element of the 16-foot tall, 27-foot long mastodon will be rusty — in keeping with the boiler’s life’s story — except the tusks,” Because if you look at mastodon skeleton, those tusks are ivory — so the tusks have to be white,” Breunig said.
The creature doesn’t have a name — at least not yet.
Starting Friday and throughout the weekend people can submit suggestions via Instagram at @historicthirdward. The winner will receive a couple of tasty gift certificates.
“I believe I get to choose. I have banned one name though (because) anyone who’s seen Ray Romano in Ice Age knows Manny and Manny is a mammoth, he’s not a mastodon. So it can’t be Manny,” Breunig said.
There was still a bit of work underway when I visited. “We’re putting rocks under it right now,” Breunig said.
During the last Ice Age, mastodons would not have been walking on concrete. “They would have walked on rocks. So that’s most fitting,” he said.
Breunig is clearly having fun with what he calls his “little art sculpture."
Listener Kathy Kercheck said she plans to queue up for the unveiling. I wonder if she’ll throw a name in the hat?
