Gilded Age Milwaukee: the Mackie Building and Grain Exchange Room

Alexander Mitchell commissioned E.T. Mix to construct the Mackie Building in 1879. It stands next to Mitchell's former office, the Mitchell Building, another 1870s Mix design. Credit: Tobias Torgerson

Alexander Mitchell commissioned E.T. Mix to construct the Mackie Building in 1879. It stands next to Mitchell's former office, the Mitchell Building, another 1870s Mix design.
This bas-relief on the facade of the Mackie Building celebrates Wisconsin and its resources; it shows the state animal (badger), state motto (Forward), and examples of the state's economy (a sailor, a miner, ships, horns of plenty, etc.).
This is the main entrance to the three-story Grain Exchange Room. In the middle of the floor one sees the former location of the trading pit. The room is currently a banquet hall.
This was formerly the center of the octagonal trading pit. Around this focal point was a raised platform from which merchants bid on grain.
The upper walls of the Grain Exchange Room are adorned with murals depicting Greek deities, some of them symbolic of agriculture and industry. At the top of this photo one sees the edge of a large skylight.
This photo gives some sense of how large and opulent the Grain Exchange truly is.
One of the paintings in the Grain Exchange depicts the sort of simple country harvest that supplied the wheat feverishly bought and sold by Milwaukee's traders and shipped from the bustling nearby port.
Ships such as these carried Midwestern wheat from Milwaukee through the Great Lakes to the greater world beyond.
The third painting in the Grain Exchange series shows what American Indian agriculture was like before the white man occupied the land and sowed his European crops (such as wheat).
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Gilded Age Milwaukee: the Mackie Building and Grain Exchange Room

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