Judging by his impact upon our city’s architecture in the late 1800s, business magnate Alexander Mitchell (1817-1887) merits the title of Milwaukee’s Alexander the Great. President of the Marine Bank (at one time Wisconsin’s largest bank), Northwestern National Insurance, and the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railroad, Mitchell amassed a significant fortune during Milwaukee’s heyday in the 1860s and 1870s as largest wheat market in the world. In turn, Mitchell lavished his money upon a number of stylish buildings that adorn the Milwaukee to this day. In this post, we shall focus on two such buildings he owned outright – the Mitchell Building and what is now the Wisconsin Club.
Catching sight of the Mitchell Building at the corner of Michigan and Water Streets, a tourist might think he had been transported to nineteenth-century Paris. Completed in 1878, the Mitchell Building is the work of architect E.T. Mix (1831-1890) and exemplifies the grace and ornamentation of the Second Empire style, so-called because of its association with the reign of French Emperor Napoleon II (1852-1870). Standing five stories high with mansard roofs and a central tower, the Mitchell Building at one time served as headquarters to all three of Alexander Mitchell’s businesses. While the railroad, bank, and insurance company have since departed the building, this ornate monument to commerce continues to serve its original purpose as an office building. The current owner, Joshua Jeffers, has even initiated a remodeling project (visible in the photo slideshow) in order to retain the building’s current tenants. The Mitchell Building is listed in the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.
As stylish in his domestic undertakings as in his commercial ones, Alexander Mitchell also built the splendid mansion on Wisconsin Avenue that now serves as home to the Wisconsin Club. In addition to the iconic wrought iron fence, clubhouse tower, and gazebo, John Gurda (p. 110) reports that the mansion once featured spacious greenhouses that produced flowers and exotic plants even in the dead of winter: “[Mitchell’s] gardeners tended nearly 9,000 specimens protected by 15,000 square feet of glass, with an emphasis on the exotic: banana and pineapple plants; peach, apricot, and fig trees; an assortment of 800 rose bushes; and the full range of tropical and temperate flowers.” While the greenhouses have since been torn down, the Wisconsin Club and Mitchell Building still testify to the fine architectural sensibility Alexander Mitchell bequeathed to Milwaukee.
Sources:
In addition to the websites linked to above, I have relied on John Gurda’s The Making of Milwaukee (Brookfield, WI: Milwaukee County Historical Society, 2000), pages 107-112. Please see p. 109 for Mitchell’s nickname as “Alexander the Great.”
I also consulted Sandra Ackerman’s Milwaukee Then and Now (Sand Diego, CA: Thunder Bay Press, 2004), p. 54-55.
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