A little over 15 years ago, George Wagner was flipping through books in at an architectural bookstore in Toronto. He was reading about how Toronto’s mayor had brought an event similar to Doors Open to the city around 2000.
Soon, he was on a plane to Denver to check out their version of Doors Open. He then went on to found Doors Open Milwaukee.
“The thing that impressed me the most was the smiles on people’s faces as they were walking around,” Wagner recalls. “Denver has some really excellent buildings, however I knew that in Milwaukee, we actually had more.”
Wagner was working at Milwaukee Central Library at the time, and had done tours with Historic Milwaukee before. He pitched the idea to them, and then got to work getting some notable buildings downtown on board. He started with his workplace at Milwaukee Central Library. He then coaxed people at Milwaukee City Hall and the then-US Bank building, getting them on board.
The first Doors Open Milwaukee was held in 2011, and it was an instant hit.
“We had something in the order of 10,000 people who went through our sites that first year, and that probably exceed our expectations,” he says.
But from the beginning, Wagner wanted Doors Open Milwaukee to be more than a fun weekend. He wanted it to be a reminder of all Milwaukee had to offer to those who had grown up in the city but now lived elsewhere.
“One of the ideas was to say, ‘Come back home to Milwaukee,’” he says. “Don’t just come to a Bucks game and maybe a restaurant, you’re passing up all sorts of things.”
Superfans and childlike wonder
Kim Cunningham is a big fan of Doors Open Milwaukee. Every year, she blocks off her calendar and says she attends 15-20 sites annually while also volunteering for the event.
“My family and friends know that for the third weekend in September, I am not available,” she shares.
She’s also a lifelong photographer. She says she started taking photos in elementary school with a camera she got as a gift. That love for photography continued, and she got a college degree in photography.
Now, she puts those skills to use by capturing oddities and mundane beauty of buildings and people she sees at Doors Open.
“I am a sucker for different ornamental elements of buildings,” Cunningham says. “Sometimes people find me getting on the floor to take a picture of tile, or door hinges.”
But for Cunningham, photography is more than a hobby. She sees it as a way for people to see the everyday beauty of Milwaukee.
“People from other cities or other parts of the state just say, ‘Oh it’s crime-ridden,’” she said. “Taking photographs at Doors Open helps me say that we have beautiful buildings, beautiful people, and people where people may not expect it.”
Ashley Town, owner of Bay View Print Shop, is no stranger to finding beauty. She came to Milwaukee as an art student, before working in graphic design and eventually owning her own letterpress shop.
She says the instant she walked into Bay View Print Shop, which holds printing equipment that is more than 100 years old, she wondered at the artistry from a bygone era.
“Everything in the basement is anywhere from 80 to 150 years old,” Town says. “So printing was not a hobby of mine, but I immediately fell in love with it when I found the shop.”
Though Town had been so entranced initially by the print shop, when she bought the place it slowly became a business. The day to day chiseled away at her initial wonder, and walking into the shop for the thousandth time didn’t hit the same as the first.
She decided to participate in Doors Open in 2015, expecting to see about 100 visitors. She got over 1,600. But she also got a reminder of why she was in the letterpress business in the first place.
“To show a kid that you can hold language and history in your hands, that’s always really cool,” Town said. “I think it reminds us that what we have is important.”
15 years of opening doors and minds
Grace Fuhr, events director at Historic Milwaukee, says the event has grown to host 165 buildings and over 70,000 visits to those sites this year. In addition to opening buildings, today the event includes neighborhood tours.
Fuhr says Historic Milwaukee now has data to support Wagner’s original vision of Doors Open Milwaukee being an event that reignites connection to the city. Fifteen years later, the event is instilling pride and encouraging exploration.
“On a survey we ask, ‘Did this event make you proud to be a Milwaukeean?’ and 90% of people say, 'Yes, it did,'” she says. “We also ask if people visited a neighborhood they were previously unfamiliar with and if they plan to visit again, and we get high percentages of people who say they did.”
