Urban Spelunking is brought to you by Nicolet Law.
Turn off Green Bay Avenue in Glendale and find yourself in a somewhat typical subdivision of curving streets – no sidewalks here – dotted with low-slung homes erected in the second half of the 20th century.
On the arc of one cul-de-sac a quietly elegant home with an earthy feel almost fades into its wooded landscape on the west bank of the Milwaukee River.
This is the house that well-known Milwaukee architect Elmer A. Johnson designed and had built for his family in the mid-1950s, after two of his three children had left the nest.
You’d expect the story of such a home to be pretty much the story of that man and his family. But painting a picture of the striking – and even more strikingly situated – Elmer A. Johnson House requires a wider canvas.
Sure, the house is inexorably wrapped up in the story of Johnson, but also of his firm Grassold & Johnson, which left its mark all around the area, designing more than 2,000 buildings over the years.
Johnson’s work was always very publicly on view – County Stadium, a massive addition to Milwaukee Public Library, MPS' Central Office, MATC’s T Building, most of the buildings at Milwaukee County Zoo, Southgate Mall, the Central YMCA, the M&I Bank Building on Water Street, many schools including the "new" Custer.
Perhaps that’s why he opted to have his own house be almost totally out of sight.
But, the story also cannot be told without Jeff and Barbara Joseph, who have been more than simply owners and caretakers of the house for the past three decades.
The Josephs, who bought the home in 1991, are passionate explorers of every facet of the house’s history, construction and life.
Who was Elmer Johnson?
Elmer Alvin Johnson was born in Chicago on April 22, 1901 to 31-year-old carpenter August Johnson and his wife Hilda, also 31, who had arrived from Sweden in 1887 and 1889, respectively.
In 1910, the family – which also included 16-year-old Harry and 6-year-old Arthur – lived on the North Side Roscoe Village neighborhood. A decade later, they were in the Irving Park East area.
By 1920, Gust – who had become a citizen with Hilda in 1896 – was still working as a carpenter, and 19-year-old Elmer was employed as a helper at an electric company. Soon, however, Elmer would be enrolled at the Armour Institute on the South Side.
The Armour Institute of Technology (which became part of Illinois Tech via a merger with the Lewis Institute in 1940) was founded in 1893 but has roots going back to the 1870s when meatpacking magnate Joseph F. Armour left $100,000 to start a Sunday school. His brother Philip added another $100,000 and launched the Armour Mission.
When librarian Julia Beveridge started to organize hands-on classes, the road to the Armour Institute was opened and soon a technical college was a reality.
A partnership with the Art Institute of Chicago advanced the school’s architectural program, from which Johnson would earn a Bachelor of Science in Architecture in 1923.
A short biography copied from an unknown source notes that Johnson also attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago at some point.
Upon graduation, Johnson found a position with Foltz and Brand Architects in Chicago.
The firm had been founded in 1915 when Herbert A. Brand joined the practice of Frederick L. Foltz, who had already established a reputation in the city. Foltz died in 1916, however, and was replaced by his son Frederick C. Foltz until the firm’s dissolution in 1925.
When this occurred, Johnson opened his own practice, in partnership with his fellow 1923 Armour graduate Fred E. Sloan, who would go on to design a number of Chicago-area Midcentury Modern properties.
During the late 1920s, according to Milwaukee architect Gary Zimmerman – who worked with Johnson later – Sloan & Johnson, which had its offices on East Erie Street, near St. Clair Street, was “a 10-man firm.”
At the dawn of 1930, the 28-year-old Johnson was renting an apartment in Rogers Park, where he lived with his Missouri-born wife Eunice and their 5-month-old daughter MaryAnn.
But during the latter 1920s, Zimmerman added, “Johnson earned a reputation as a delineator, producing renderings for Milwaukee architects,” and in 1929 he registered as an architect in Wisconsin.
It is likely this work that led Johnson to move his family to Milwaukee, where by spring 1930, Johnson had found a place with the respected and busy firm of Herbert W & S. Minard Tullgren, Inc., which also had Chicago roots.
The Tullgrens were from Chicago but father Martin Tullgren had moved to Milwaukee at the start of the 20th century. A few years later, Martin was joined in his practice by his sons Herbert and Sven Minard, who changed the name of the firm after their father’s death in 1922.
Over the years, the Tullgrens designed many Milwaukee buildings, including the Downer Theater, the Astor Hotel, the George Watts building, the Bertelson Building on Prospect Avenue, the Schroeder (now Hilton Milwaukee City Center) and others.
Johnson was a participant in the Tullgren firm’s lauded work on duplex apartment buildings – including the Viking Apartments on Farwell and Kane – on which Tullgren held a patent. In fact, Johnson was part of the Fylgia Corporation, a real estate business formed by Tullgren and C. E. Look, in January 1931, to “erect buildings.”
It appears, however, that the Viking project was the only one Fylgia actually built.
When and why Johnson parted ways from Tullgren isn’t exactly clear. But it had, perhaps, taken place by the dawn of 1934 when Johnson’s name appeared on a competition entry – alongside Herbert Grassold’s and that of the latter’s employer Clas & Clas – for a new Scottish Rite building planned for a site on the northwest corner of State and Astor, on property purchased from hotelier Walter Schroeder.
Interestingly, I’ve seen two published renderings of the submission and while one lists Johnson and Grassold as the architects and Clas & Clas as associate architects, the other shows the opposite: Grassold and Johnson as associates and Clas & Clas as architects.
Regardless, the entry – a huge church-like structure with a tall tower – was a winner, nabbing the $1,000 prize in the competition, which was open only to Consistory members. Grassold and Johnson used the award as seed money to start their own practice under that name. (That they got the money suggests Grassold and Johnson were, indeed, the architects.)
The Scottish Rite Consistory, however, ultimately balked at the cost of a new building and opted instead to have their 19th century Edward Townsend Mix-designed building expanded and remodeled by Johnson’s former employer, Herbert Tullgren. The State Street site later became home to the Milwaukee Inn/Park East Hotel.
But the project helped kickstart what would become one of the major architectural firms in the city, as in 1935, Herb Grassold and Elmer Johnson became partners.
A bit about Herbert J. Grassold
Herbert John Grassold was born in Milwaukee on June 21, 1898 to native-born printer George Grassold (whose Bavarian parents may have used the spelling Grasholt) and Theresia Wellstein (whose family hailed from the Rhineland), though George father died the following year of a stroke at just 30 years old.
In 1900, Theresia married Dutch immigrant Jacob DeMeyer, a streetcar motorman, and in 1910, the family consisted of Grassold and his elder sisters Edna and Mary Rose, their mother, DeMeyer and Theresa’s mother Barbara Wellstein.
Grassold graduated from West Division High School in 1916 and by the time of the 1920 census – when the family was much the same and living at the same Juneau Avenue address – Grassold was already listed as working as an architect.
Presumably right after high school, Grassold studied architectural design for three years at Columbia University and then another two at the College of the City of New York.
Afterward, he landed a position as a job captain for George B. Post & Sons, whose many notable works include the New York Stock Exchange and the Wisconsin State Capitol.
Post had died in 1913 and during Grassold’s time in the office – in 1921 and ‘22 – the firm was headed by Post’s sons William and James Otis, along with W. Sydney Wagner.
It appears Grassold returned to Milwaukee in 1922, at which time he was licensed as an architect in Wisconsin.
In 1926-27 he worked as chief draftsman at Clas, Shepard & Clas, before opening his own practice in 1928.
Grassold & Johnson
Once the two architects united, it seemed there was no stopping them. By the time the they designed the Finney Library branch for Milwaukee Public Library in 1953, theirs was among the top 20 largest architectural firms in the country. In the 1960s, Grassold & Johnson had 100 employees at its Downtown office, making it the largest in Wisconsin.
And it’s difficult to imagine a MIlwaukee without their work.
Around 1950 they designed Wisconsin’s first Howard Johnson’s restaurant on 27th Street. Within little more than a decade their built works included an addition to the former Bay View Library; Mayfair Mall; Tosa’s Civic Center (city hall, library, etc.); most public schools in Whitefish Bay, plus many schools, public and private, in other communities; the Varsity Theater on the Marquette campus (1936); the large addition to the Wisconsin Telephone (AT&T) Building on Broadway); the Walter Schroeder Aquatic Center; plus many banks, seemingly countless additions to existing building; and the list goes on and on.
“Grassold was like the business guy,” recalls retired architect Gary Zimmerman, who worked at the firm early in his long, distinguished career. “Elmer was the designer, and Elmer was deaf as a fence post. But he had one of these old-time hearing aids.
"I didn't become buddy buddy with him, but Elmer knew me because of my relationship with (his son) Bill. Bill (also an architect) and I probably had lunch a couple of times a week.”
When Grassold died in 1965, Johnson must have lost an important figure in his life. In 1942, when filling out his draft registration card, Grassold – despite having been married 20 years at that point – wrote Johnson's name in the box marked "next of kin."
Johnson continued on as the sole proprietor of the firm, which continued on after his retirement, in 1970, under the leadership of his son Bill. Later, it was called Johnson-Wagner-Isley-Widen & Hipp, Architects.
Johnson passed away in Florida in 1990 at the age of 89.
Johnson's house
While it’s been said that Grassold & Johnson reportedly designed more than 2,000 buildings in Milwaukee and beyond, there is one that is surely a crisper reflection – and closest to the heart – of Elmer Johnson.
That’s the house he designed for himself and his family on the banks of the Milwaukee River in Glendale ... the house long occupied and loved by the Josephs.
Arriving, one passes through the subdivision that occupies land that once belonged entirely to Johnson before he kept a couple riverfront parcels and sold off the rest to developers Nolan Kenny and Robert Boerner.
One of those plots is a sprawling, wooded lot on at the end of a cul-de-sac, that makes its way down to the Milwaukee River.
Pulling into the driveway, the house barely reveals itself. So perfectly is it nestled into its landscape, that its difficult to pick it out in daylight amid the trees.
As you near it, one spies its low, flat roof, its walls almost entirely in glass, with a stone path – sheltered by a wood canopy – that directs you straight to the entrance.
Inside, the natural feeling continues with flagstone floors that feel like an extension of the welcome path, weathered wooden beams and exposed rafters, skylights and those floor to ceiling windows that bring the surrounding woods right into the living and other rooms.
Fieldstones found on the property were used to construct the chimney and the house's lower walls, according to a 1967 Milwaukee Journal article.
The wood was salvaged from the Downing Box Company building, built around 1918 at 3rd and Vienna to predominantly sell boxes to local breweries, and purchased by Johnson when the structure was razed at 3rd and Vienna in 1954, when the architect was designing his new home, which was completed the following year.
“We were told by Joseph Dahlman (of Dahlman Construction) that Verne Cottam, who was a project manager/supervisor working under Richard (Dick) Hunzinger at Hunzinger (which built the Johnson house) told Elmer about the wood,” says Joseph, as we gaze up at the rafters in the office that offers a panoramic view out toward the river. “Obviously the house was designed with the wood in mind. You can’t have reverse engineered that.
“I would think in the early ‘50s they were probably taking down a lot of buildings. What would've happened to this wood if he hadn't done this? Destroyed. And why did he use used wood? Mybe he’s trying to save money? Maybe they knew already that the old growth white pine was not the same. And it's proven because this wood is unbelievable. It is so resistant to decay.
“And how do you do it? Who took the nails out? Where do you store it? How do you know how much material you have? I don't think this could happen on a normal owner’s building.”
It’s as modernist a home as you’d expect from Johnson, whose commercial work was firmly rooted in mid-century Modernism.
Its clean lines are softened by its Frank Lloyd Wright-style embrace of the natural, and by the use of this wood that had already developed a beautiful patina by the time Johnson acquired it.
Over time, Johnson sold off some of the adjacent property, but he kept a nice chunk for himself, building paths and a bridge through the ravines.
Before constructing the house, the Johnsons built a small guest house down near the river that's cantilevered off the slope. It’s the kind of amenity that likely wouldn’t be approved today.
The Johnsons lived in this small space, with its small kitchen, bathroom and main room while the big house was being built up the hill.
Stylistically, this place is a miniature version of that main house, with big windows that help bridge the indoors and outdoors. It’s a lovely little place that would be an incredible place for one person to call home.
On a prominent beam in the living room, Johnson tapped local artist – and frequent collaborator – Dick Wiken to carve the phrase, “After me cometh a builder : tell him I too have known.”
It is a line from “The Palace,” a poem in which Rudyard Kipling muses on one’s place in the continuum of passing time.
It’s a phrase that has sparked something in Jeff Joseph, who has puzzled over Johnson’s intentions. Why carve that line with a little Kilroy-style character in mid-phrase? Not elaborately adorned, in relatively plain script?
“I've got to believe those words are important,” Joseph says. “Connecting the meaning of the poem to Elmer’s work is a major challenge for me. I believe that in the beginning, it's just, ‘hey, I'm building a monument to myself. I'm building a palace. I'm great.’ But as he ages and as wisdom comes, he realized ‘no, my palace will be dust. What survives is the caring, the love.’
“Then you realize that he's telling me something from the past and now I'm communicating to the future. Now this he built for himself.”
Zimmerman concurs, saying his former boss wisely avoided building himself a show home that would be celebrated but prove uncomfortable.
“Architects trap themselves by saying, ‘how's this going to look when it's published,” he says. “Then you start designing the house not for yourself, but for other people's impressions, And it’s wrong, definitely wrong.
“You got to live in it, so you're going to be comfortable in your lifestyle. It’s got to fit. So you can be as nontraditional as you want, but if it's unlivable or if it's so stark because you want it to be in Architectural Record and it looks like a museum ... well, I fell into that trap, but did it on paper.
"Elmer overcame that trap. Because (his house) fits so well into the site. He took advantage of the site, so that he's living outdoors, indoors.”
Urban Spelunking is brought to you by Nicolet Law.
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
