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If you love cream city brick buildings like I do, then surely you too have watched the deterioration of the 62,000-square-foot Ferry & Clas-designed factory building on the corner of 15th and St. Paul with a mix of sadness, frustration and anger.
Built for the Geuder, Paeschke & Frey metalworking company in 1890, the four-story building at 324 N. 15th St. looks ripe for redevelopment, especially with a brewery and gym next door, architects and other offices across the street in rehabbed buildings and other businesses and developments nearby, including Sobelman’s and Guardian Fine Art Services and its gallery, to name but two.
But the only change we’ve witnessed at the empty GPF building in recent years has been the rise in the number of broken windows. That trend has ceased only because they windows are now all shattered, littering the surrounding grounds with shards.
But there’s one of us cream city brick-loving Milwaukeens who has the experience and resources – and perhaps more importantly, the chutzpah and the vision – to turn this thing around: Kendall Breunig of Sunset Investors.
He’s the guy that took a similarly devastated – and even more sprawling – Pritzlaff Hardware complex further east on St. Paul Avenue and brought it back to life, creating apartments, restaurants, a brewery, retail shops, offices and more in the once boarded up place.
“This is what you call a fixer-upper,” quips Breunig as we stand, flashlights in hand, in the basement of the building, near an exposed piling, a large puddle of water underfoot and graffiti adorning the stone foundation walls around us.
Grim as that may sound, Breunig has no trouble seeing what a transformation could bring. And he’s already got some potential tenants who have expressed interest in retail spaces in the basement and on the first floor.
The plan could also include roughly 45 apartments and the construction of a small retail building with a parking structure behind it on a vacant part of the property.
Breunig has an option to buy the building that expires at the end of the year, and the clock is ticking.
So, what’s the problem?
Well, the Menomonee Valley has long been industrial and commercial and the building’s site is not zoned residential. So Breunig is seeking a variance from the city and up ‘til now that’s been anything but easy.
Not only has the nonprofit Menomonee Valley Partners Inc. redevelopment group opposed it on the grounds that its 2015 Valley 2.0 Plan prohibits residential units in the district, so has Potawatomi Casino Hotel, as well as the City’s Department of City Development, all of whom have argued that the industrial neighborhood with its noise, vibrations and truck traffic is not suited to apartment living.
“There is pressure to repurpose underutilized and obsolete industrial building stock into multi-family residential units,” the plan document notes, “which has raised the potential for land use conflicts with the existing industrial and commercial employers, who currently enjoy a residence-free area in which to conduct manufacturing operations that can occur at any hour of the day or night.”
Some have suggested that Breunig convert the building to office space, but he says that’s not feasible for a number of reasons.
“I ran structural calculations on the building and it cannot support the weight of office loads,” he says. “So (they) said, ‘what would it take to reinforce it and could we get you some kind of city funding to do that?”
But potential office tenants “don't exist,” Breunig says. “That's the problem. I did have a (potential office tenant) showing for the whole building, but they've gone silent. Even if I had one, because I'm using historic tax credits and all the time construction is going to take, even if they signed right now about the soonest they'd be in is three years.
“If an office tenant is in the market right now, they have 500-some possible alternatives in the Downtown area. Why would they come here and wait three years?”
Since the opposition would like to see the Valley remain industrial, how about that?
“Industrial doesn't go vertical anymore,” says Breuning, who adds that the structural issue would also remain.
In a letter to Zoning and Neighborhood Development Committee dated Nov. 13, Menomonee Valley Partners and BID 26 appear to have softened on their opposition, writing that the building, “is the only existing building in the Valley that is locally designated historic and has been vacant for 40+ years, and is therefore a unique circumstance.
“The rezoning request should be the only exception made to allow a use that is specifically prohibited by the Valley 2.0 Plan without undertaking a proper community engagement process.”
MVP also urged the city to prohibit use of taxpayer funds for the project and to require that any leases for apartments in the building include a disclosure alerting tenants to the neighborhood’s industrial character and uses.
Contacted for comment, a Potawatomi Casino Hotel spokesman deferred to MVP.
"We have continued working with Kendall, Ald. (Robert) Bauman, MVP and local businesses to find a solution for this blighted building that has a positive impact on the surrounding area," a DCD spokesperson said in a statement provided to OnMilwaukee. "We encouraged conversations between Mr. Breunig and MVP, and are pleased that those conversations appear to have been fruitful in identifying a solution that balances the goals of Valley stakeholders.
"Part of this balance is ensuring that any zoning change for this site be specific to this blighted property, while simultaneously reinforcing the commitment of the City and our partners that the Valley is a thriving center for modern industrial and job-creating uses and to not undo the years of work in implementing that vision."
The building is a remnant of a manufacturing company with a long history and a once-sprawling footprint in the Menomonee Valley.
Geuder, Paeschke & Frey’s history starts with the 1880 partnership between William Geuder and his brother-in-law Charles Paeschke.
Geuder was the son of a German immigrant tinsmith George Geuder who by 1855 – seven years after landing in the U.S. and six years after arriving in Milwaukee, with his wife Louisa Stern Geuder – had his own shop on Water Street.
Later, the Geuders moved to a wood frame building on what it now the site of Mader’s Restaurant. His shop was downstairs and the family home above. (Later, the building would be the site of Victor Schlitz’s liquor business.)
It is here that young William – who would study at the German-English Academy and Spencerian Business College – learned the trade at his father’s side in the 1860s and ‘70s and joined the business, now renamed Geuder & Son, in 1877. A year earlier, William married Emma Paeschke.
In 1879, when the elder Geuder died, the business became William’s.
In 1880, Geuder partnered with his wife’s brother Charles Paeschke, who had also attended Spencerian. Despite being just 23 (five years younger than Geuder), Paeschke brought eight years’ experience as a clerk and bookkeeper to the business.
For a year, they and their 12 employees, who worked to make things like tin pails, coffee mills, ice water coolers, mailboxes, cake pans and portable bathtubs – as well as wholesaling other manufacturers’ wares – remained on 3rd Street, before briefly relocating to Everett Street (now home to We Energies) between 3rd and 4th Streets.
Before year’s end they’d have yet another new home, having moved to bigger quarters on Water Street in the Third Ward. But apparently that site was also short-lived as by 1882, the company, which had now brought on Fond du Lac-born Frank J. Frey as secretary and treasurer, was based on Lake Street in Chicago.
Frey – who like Geuder, would marry one of Paeschke’s sisters – had owned stock in the company from the get-go and was head of operations in Chicago, where the company sold its products to burgeoning retailers like Montgomery Ward and Sears.
Though the company returned to Milwaukee in 1883, taking up residence on the Plankinton Avenue site that would later become home to Gimbels, the Chicago business continued operating via a sales office and warehouse for another 60 years.
By 1888, Geuder & Paeschke (Frey’s name was added in 1909) had 125 employees and the following year it stopped selling goods made by others. At the same time, it decided it needed a bigger home for its factory operations.
The site chosen on the southeast corner of 15th and St. Paul had been home to the Cream City Brick Company’s brickyards since 1836 and, indeed, the brickyard kilns continued to smoke there at the time.
This is when the company hired George Bowman Ferry and Alfred C. Clas, who had just partnered, likely making this among their earliest collaborations. Later, of course, the two would design higher-profile projects like the Pabst Mansion, the Central Library, Northwestern National Insurance headquarters and Milwaukee Auditorium, before going their separate ways in 1912.
The architects drew a four-story L-shaped, cream city brick building with an elevated basement and an arched entrance at the northwest corner. It was built by Milwaukee’s H.S. Pelton, according to the National Register of Historic Places registration form for the neighborhood historic district, at a cost of $20,000.
(The latter source suggests that the company moved to an existing building on the site in 1890 and did not construct the current building until 1895. However, other sources disagree and the 1894 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map shows what appears to be the building already in place, though it's possible that map was later updated.)
Here, GPF made a wide variety of products, including enameled coffee flasks, stove pipes, dairy pails, candle molds and other wares, alongside numerous household objects in tin, copper, sheet iron and more. At one time, GPF was the country’s largest manufacturer of cooking utensils.
It also made mining lamps and canteens, toy metal banks, candlesticks, portable stoves and heaters, children’s table trays and saloon spittoons. GPF manufactured parts for early automobile manufacturers like Dodge, Cadillac and Lincoln, as well as equipment used in the building of the Panama Canal and gas tanks and canteens for World War I.
Later, in 1935, GPF created the first licensed character-themed lunchbox aimed at children. As I shared in this story, that lunch box, which featured Mickey Mouse and other Disney characters, is now a highly in-demand collectible and can sometimes be found listed on eBay at upwards of $2,500.
A company history noted that in 1910, the first floor of the Ferry & Clas building facing St. Paul housed offices, while the sheet iron shop was upstairs on two, and the third and fourth floors had tin shops. On the 15th Street side, there was a press room on one, tin shop on two and warehouse space on floors three and four.
Over time, GPF expanded and had buildings all around the 15th and St. Paul intersection, covering 17 acres from 13th to 16th Streets. Many are gone, but a few still stand, like one kitty corner from the Ferry & Clas building and one just west that houses Third Space Brewing and BrewCity CrossFit. Another one – not built by GPF, but later purchased by it – is now home to Guardian Fine Art Services.
During World War II GPF – which had pioneered some processes over the years, including electrostatic spray painting and the use of infrared ray electric lamp paint dryers – was booming, making canteens, ammo boxes, gas tanks and other war-effort materials.
In 1941, the building underwent renovations and alterations, including, most likely, reconfiguration of the main entrance, where a new staircase was installed inside.
The founding families remained in charge for three generations across 75 years before GPF was purchased in 1955 by Edwin F. Gordon.
In the latter part of the 20th century, the company pivoted to make things like steel shipping containers and computer shells. However, by 1983, it filed for bankruptcy and it was bought by General Press and Fabricating Company in 1984, which then closed the St. Paul Avenue facility.
On June 25, 2001, Milwaukee Fire Department responded to an alarm at 10:45 p.m. after a fire started in the back of the building and raged from the second floor up through the roof.
Due to the proximity of the railroad tracks, firefighters struggled to gain access to the rear of the building.
By the time a fifth alarm was sounded at 2:23 in the morning, more than a dozen pieces of equipment were on site, including multiple engines and ladder trucks, the air supply unit, a tower ladder, a medical unit and the high-volume hose unit.
At the time, according to neighboring business owners, at least four homeless people had been living in the building “for years.”
The damage was so bad that the back portion of the building had to be demolished. If you look closely at the south wall along 15th Street you can see the difference in the brick.
Today, there are still some remnants of the fire to be seen inside, according to Breunig, but when we visited, I didn’t get to see them. That’s because keeping vandals out has been an only vaguely successful game of cat and mouse. Thus, even once inside, the floors are sectioned off from one another with boarded up doors.
The Read family-owned Readco, which owned General Press and Fabricating, still owns the building and it is with them that Breunig has a purchase agreement.
We visited the first floor and the basement, both of which are covered in graffiti. On the first floor someone painted a sign that said “Cream City Gallery.”
In the back, there's a large space with soaring ceiling heights and one wall that's almost entirely windows.
In the front part, the big open spaces – albeit lined with structural posts – would seem perfect for Third Ward-style retail shops, restaurants and loft-style apartments. The main problem here is uneven floors due to settling of the posts.
“The perimeter walls are all pretty solid and level all the way around,” says Breunig as we walk along the floor, “but all the columns have settled down. They range between four and 12 inches down.
“The column heights are all a big mess. So if you jack the building up, you could never get it leveled. We're going to run two by four sleepers all the way across (to) level. We're going to slip insulation in and then we'll gypsum the floor to level it and that'll also give us soundproofing.”
We go down into the basement where there’s another huge open space with good ceiling heights and lots of windows that would appear to make this another perfect space for retail.
“I do have someone that looked at the basement last week and was interested because it has so many windows,” Breunig says, as he walks me over to a water-filled hole in the concrete floor, where he explains that he suspects shorter than normal piles were used to support the building, leading to the settling.
Now, Breunig waits for the city to consider rezoning the property, hopefully before the time runs out on his contract. The subject will be discussed at the Nov. 19 meeting of the Zoning, Neighborhoods & Development Committee.
In the meantime, he’s spent money on a place he doesn’t even own yet. He’s had structural surveys done and plans drawn up, he’s jacked up the sagging roof so that water would drain off and spent $10,000 to get electric service back into the place.
Breunig says, “They know if I don't get approved, the option is a lot worse,” noting that now that the building has historic designation it would be a lot harder to tear it down. “There was talk of ordering it to be torn down before.”
In its Nov. 13 letter to the Zoning Committee, Menomonee Valley Partners wrote that it, “understands that nearby property owners and businesses on St. Paul Avenue have been negatively impacted by the nuisance issues created by this property and recognizes their support for a solution to the problems of this building.
“We agree with them that since the current ownership has done nothing in the last 40 years to bring improvement to this steadily deteriorating property, the prospective owner/developer Mr. Breunig is the best hope for saving the building and restoring it to productive use.”
If his request doesn’t get OK’d? It’s over and he’s out his time and investment.
If it does?
“Then I close in December,” he says. “It takes twice as long to do anything that's got historic tax credits because you have to get all the approvals before you do the work.
"If I could have enough of an approval from the National Park Service by late ‘25 ... the (I'd need)a year and a half for construction.”
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.
