The Wisconsin Gas Building may be best known for what is on top — a flame-shaped lamp that changes color with the weather. But it's also one of Milwaukee’s foremost contributions to the Art Deco era, and its story begins over three billion years ago when its building materials were beginning to form.
Raymond Wiggers, architectural geologist and author of Milwaukee in Stone and Clay, joined Lake Effect's Sam Woods to discuss the building's lengthy geological history.
An oversized moon, no plants and unbreathable air
The base of the Wisconsin Gas Building is made of Morton Gneiss, a metamorphic rock that exhibits a swirling, multicolored pattern. Quarried from Morton, Minnesota, this rock is made of constituent parts that came together over about a billion years. The oldest parts of this rock date back 3.524 billion years.
Wiggers explains that the world looked very different when this rock formed than it does now. The only kinds of life forms were single-celled, such as bacteria. The landscape was barren, the moon was twice as close as it is today, and the air did not have enough oxygen for humans to breath.
"If you were able to jump into a time machine and go back to [this] era, you'd have to wear some sort of survival suit," Wiggers says.
Other notable geological features of the Wisconsin Gas Building can be found in its accents. Above the main entrance is a bronze sunburst. The original ornament was removed in 1966, replaced with a replica in 2003 that is still there today.
Wiggers reminds us that while this is a metal, it is a part of geological history as much as stones like Morton Gneiss.
"Where do our metals come from? They come from rocks, from ores," Wiggers says.
Moving to the upper exterior of the building, you'll see a pinkish stone used for ornamental trim. This is known in the trade as Kasota Stone, but to geologists is called Oneota Dolostone.
Wiggers says this stone is considerably younger than the Morton Gneiss, forming only around 470 million years ago. It originally formed under a shallow saltwater sea that covered much of what is now North America.
Art Deco in Milwaukee
"Art Deco" refers to an architecture, art and design style popularly in the early 20th century, particularly in the 1920s. Buildings in this style typically feature clear sections of rectangular concrete forms with minimal ornamentation, stacked in ever-narrower sections called "setbacks."
Worldwide, Art Deco architectural features are found in buildings like the Empire State Building in New York City and the National Diet Building in Japan. Here in Milwaukee, the Wisconsin Gas Building is one of the city's more prominent contributions to this movement.
Wiggers says Art Deco's emphasis on rectangles and straight lines may be best understood in comparison to Art Nouveau, a separate early 20th century style that typically featured winding patterns and allusions to nature.
"Art Deco was somewhat of a reaction to that," Wiggers says. "This was the art form of the machine age."
