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Although the materials, color scheme and motifs aren’t identical, Milwaukee’s South Side Casimir Pulaski High School, 2500 W. Oklahoma Ave., is a riff on the design used to build Rufus King High School a few years earlier on the North Side.
While reusing school designs was not uncommon anywhere – and MPS did it on numerous occasions dating back to some of its earliest designs – as a means to save money and create efficiencies, in the case of Pulaski, the economic benefits of that approach were overshadowed by a controversy over the cost of constructing the building ... again, a phenomenon hardly unique to the Cream City.
The result was that the beautiful Pulaski High School – which these days is bursting at the seams due to growing enrollment and a co-location with Carmen Southeast charter school – marked the end of ornate schoolhouses in Milwaukee.
There have always been critics of the costs of school construction – and indeed pretty much any and every publicly-funded project – and those who point to specific features or decorations as superfluous. But after Pulaski was completed in 1939, the rules had changed, literally and figuratively.
While I’ve attended numerous games at Pulaski stadium and done lots of sports practice pickups and dropoffs at the school, I’d never been inside until School Board President Missy Zombor invited me over.
“Principal (Jason) O’Brien is excited and would love to show you around the building,” she said, promising – as I’d expected – that, “It has some really cool Art Deco features.”
Of course, she was not wrong.
You don’t even have to step inside to see some of them.
Look up outside and you’ll see stone highlights carved with ornate patterns, and entrances with Deco aluminum doors and window grilles with carved stone surrounds. There are busts of a Native American and, presumably, Casimir Pulaski above some.
The main entrance is, unsurprisingly, the most stunning, with its carved portraits of Revolutionary War heroes like George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, Marquis de Lafayette and, naturally, Pulaski.
There are chevron patterns and rosettes, and stars and crowns and lamps of knowledge symbols, as well as horses, eagles and, above the doors in the central oriel that runs straight up to the top of the building, "Pulaski High School," carved into the stone.
Stepping inside the foyer one is right away met with parallel Art Deco “empire lines” running vertically from floor to ceiling, more decorative grilles and a beautiful light fixture in the center of the space.
Inside the main lobby – through more lovely aluminum doors – the terrazzo floors are inlaid with colorful motifs and in the center is a giant globe, spun to the Western Hemisphere.
The walls have the same kind of tile that you can see at French Immersion (built as Steuben Junior High), with similar Revolutionary War-era motifs, including one depicting Independence Hall in Philadelphia, which hosted the signing of the Declaration of Independence, and another showing Paul Revere racing through Massachusetts on his horse.
Sleek Deco pilasters run up to crown moldings adorned with stars and there’s an even more beautiful light fixture in here.
In the corridors running off to the east and west there are inlaid tiles depicting fireflies and flowers.
These halls also have some vintage photos of Pulaski sports teams and uniforms and lots of car hoods, artistically painted, in a nod toward the school’s popular automotive repair program.
Straight back off the lobby is the library with its brightly painted ceiling that looks so vibrant that it’s hard to believe it was executed nearly 90 years ago.
The woodwork here includes a built-in card catalog.
Just outside the auditorium is a bust of Pulaski that was presented to the school by alumni.
Nearby, a pair of engraved plaques are screwed into the wall, one of which commemorates the installation of an electronic organ dedicated to the school’s first principal Justus C. Castelman and Pulaski’s World War II veterans.
Alongside it is a brass plaque depicting the school’s main entrance that marks Dec. 8, 1939, “this day was the Pulaski High School building dedicated to the boys and girls of the community as a citadel and a symbol of their hopes and aspirations. May it long endure.”
Fortunately it has endured.
Inside, the auditorium – which has a projection booth – is lovely, with skylights, a number of adornments and a striking brass grille located directly above the center of the proscenium.
The stage is deep and has a tall fly loft and what appears to be the original rigging system and lighting board.
We climb the steps that lead to the top of the fly loft, checking out the names and dates inscribed illicitly by students across the decades and find at least one familiar name, state Sen. Tim Carpenter, who graduated in 1978.
We peek into a few attic spaces along the way and get to see above the skylights, which are illuminated by spotlights, which is not uncommon.
Back out in the corridors, we take the steps down to check out the pool and the gym, with their elevated bleachers offering views from on high, and get to see the stairwells, which have stylish Art Deco railings and newel posts, terrazzo floors and wall tiles in the building’s color scheme of maroon and gold.
The pool recently underwent a much-needed renovation and while it got new lights to help brighten the space, the original seating still survives.
On the other hand, the gym, which Principal O’Brien points out could use a new floor, did get new bleachers recently.
While the building didn’t open until the end of 1939, the history of Pulaski High School goes back a a few years further.
By the dawn of the 1930s, the South Side high schools – South Division and Bay View – were at capacity and the area to the west was beginning to boom.
Thus, in 1924 the city purchased farmland – previously owned by Jacob Nunnemacher, whose last surviving building further south of 27th Street will hopefully soon be saved – along the County Park Board’s Kinnickinnic River Parkway from the Elser family and gave it to MPS.
The district quickly planned a new combination junior and high school (six-year schools like this were not uncommon; Rufus King, for example, also one for a time).
However, until funds could be raised to build a proper modern schoolhouse (the country was in the midst of the Great Depression, remember), the district used a tried and true method: temporary barracks, which were the first stage for numerous schools, including Bay View High, Fernwood, Kosciuszko (now home to Hayes Bilingual) and others.
These spartan, military-style prefab structures were also commonly used at existing buildings until additions could be erected. In fact, as late as the 2010s, the district was still using versions of them, as at Maryland Avenue Montessori, a school which has had barracks on-site at least three times during its long history.
By mid-1933 the district had put up 14 barracks buildings, each “heated” by a coal-burning stove, on the north side of Oklahoma Avenue between 24th and 26th Streets.
Before the barracks even went up, controversy sprouted out on that pastoral site, sparked in early May when school board member John Westphal proposed calling the new school “Casimir Pulaski High School” in recognition of the South Side’s heavily Polish roots.
Early plans for the barracks referred to the school as "South West High School" and "Southwest High School."
A number of local organizations, Polish and otherwise, passed resolutions in support of honoring the Polish hero of the American Revolution in this way.
Other names suggested honored people like (businessman and philanthropist) Frederick Layton and (former principal and assistant superintendent) Arthur Burch or were place-related, like Layton Park.
But by August, the conflict over the Pulaski name led the school board to consider renaming 28 schools that were named for people to location-based names, which was how most of the district’s other schools had been designated since 1912.
This took a South Side battle and made it a city-wide one as residents across Milwaukee were displeased about the proposed changes.
In a letter to the Milwaukee Journal, resident Wallace E. Maciejewski wrote, “Director Meta Berger, being the proponent of several rejected names for that particular high school, recommended, behind a blare of chauvinism, that all names of schools, some 28 in number, be changed and named after streets or areas of their location. The idea in itself is preposterous to say the least. ... Anything to prevent the new southwest side high school from being named in honor of that immortal Polish patriot.”
Later that summer, it was decided that not only would the new school be called Southwestern High School, but schools like King, Roosevelt and Juneau – among the other changes – would be renamed Capitol, Lapham and Mount Vernon, respectively.
The fact that Lapham was a person was deemed irrelevant as it was the name of the park in which the school sat; this being an issue at a number of schools, including Vieau, which was to be renamed Walker because of its location on Walker Street.
In early September, the board reversed itself and kept the old names, yet later in the month approved the name Southwest Junior-Senior High School for the new school, which was now up and running in the barracks.
Then in another about-face in early October, the board voted to change the school's name to Casimir Pulaski High School, with even Berger voting in favor despite continuing to push her naming policy.
On the same day that Juneau High School opened in its new building and 400 students who had attended Dakota, Grant, Manitoba, Morgandale and Oklahoma elementary schools became the first class in the Pulaski barracks.
In early November, the board’s building committee recommended seeking $1 million from the federal government to fund a permanent Pulaski High School building. While $300,000 of that amount would be a grant, the rest was to be a 20-year loan.
With a Dec. 1 application deadline looming, on Nov, 29, the building committee recommended boosting the request to $1.4 million to include $400,000 for a replacement building for Story School.
The final request was for $1.8 million, adding another $400,000 to build a new Tippecanoe School, after a City of Milwaukee bond issue to cover the cost was shot down by the city’s board of estimates, citing an inadequate debt margin.
In the meantime, plans for the new Pulaski building were clearly being discussed as one school board member suggested bucking a district policy that banned pools in new high schools by adding one to the plan for the new high school.
At the same time, citizens in the area were getting restless.
When enrollment doubled to 802 students at the start of the school’s second year in the barracks, Layton Park Civic Association demanded an immediate start to construction, and the following March – 1935 – the Pulaski council of the Milwaukee central body of Polish societies announced that it “favored immediate construction.”
None of these groups, it appears, offered the $1 million required to build the school, which was just one of $20 million worth of proposed construction projects in the city at the time, including a new Bradford Beach bathhouse, new bandshells in Washington and Lake Parks, swimming pools and bathhouses in Washington and Smith Parks, new Downtown bridges at Cherry, Pleasant and Juneau, a double-decker viaduct across the river at Humboldt, an Auditorium addition, a Hawley Road railway bridge, plus storm sewers, playgrounds, street paving and more.
Still – with costs rising to $1.2 million and enrollment in year three projected to rise to 1,100 before reaching 2,000 a couple years later – in May 1935, the board again discussed beginning the project even without the arrival of the federal funds.
Despite warnings from some that, “If we don’t build a permanent building out there now, we’ll spend half the price of building in barracks and then we’ll have to build anyhow,” the board instead opted to add more barracks for $20,000.
By 1937, the school board’s building committee was picking out brick styles for the building’s exterior because the federal Public Works Administration had granted just over $785,000 toward the project, the cost of which had ballooned in the interim due to rising materials and labor costs.
However, while the estimate grew to $1.972 million, bids came in at $2.4 million, with contractors countering the materials and labor argument, saying that the rise was due to “elaborate design and ornate decoration.”
The school board denied “gingerbread and waste,” and pointed out that contractors now had to fund Social Security and unemployment insurance taxes, which they didn’t previously have to pay.
MPS architect Guy E. Wiley estimated there was about $10,000 of “ornateness,” adding that a national engineering survey showed that construction costs had tripled in the past 25 years.
Still, contractors said the aluminum in the skylights, and “excess” of brass in dividing strips for terrazzo floors, heavy metal lighting fixtures and ornamental stainless steel were the issues.
Wiley rebutted that aluminum skylights, instead of galvanized iron or copper, had been used in local schools for seven years and said he doubted there would be savings if copper were used due to its high price.
Only a few light fixtures were beyond standard, he added, pointing to the ones in the entrance.
As for the stainless steel, “we wanted stainless steel in the stairways instead of iron, which has to be painted frequently. We designed the building to reduce costs. The steel may cost a little more than iron, but the difference in cost will be made up in maintenance.”
In the end, Wiley noted, Pulaski followed the plan for King, which cost only $1.25 million a few years earlier, though it bore mentioning, he added, that Pulaski was 25 percent larger.
These kinds of discussions were hardly unique to Milwaukee in the 1930s as the country struggled to pull itself out of the Great Depression. Cities around the country faced budget shortfalls thanks in part to dipping property tax revenues as real estate values fell, and leading to many projects receiving tighter-than-ever scrutiny.
In mid-December 1937, while the site of the future building was covered in hay, the Public Works Administration approved the plans and specifications for Pulaski and while also drawing plans for new Gaenslen and Manitoba schools, Wiley worked on Pulaski.
Wiley was born in Cavendish, Vermont, and attended University of North Dakota before studying mechanical engineering at University of Minnesota. After working as a practicing architect in Minneapolis, he was hired by MPS in 1924 as an assistant architect, though at the time the district had no chief architect.
Thus, in 1932, Wiley was still an assistant – albeit to no one and so, effectively, working as chief architect, leading a team of 41 draftsmen – when MPS hired former Bentley Brothers’ construction superintendent B. J. Jelinek as its chief of Bureau of Buildings and Grounds, causing something of an uproar among local architects.
The Sentinel wrote at the time that, “a number of architects in the city protested against Jelinek’s appointment on the ground that he would be ‘bossing’ Guy E. Wiley, school board architect,” the paper noted. “Roger Kirchhoff and Peter Brust, architects, pointed out that Jelinek is not a licensed architect and under state law he cannot pass on designs worked out by Wiley, a registered architect.
“Both, however, agreed Jelinek was a capable man for the job. Harry Meissner, school board president, and other school officials asserted Jelinek was being employed to coordinate school building and speed up lagging contractors, and that he would not ‘dictate’ to Wiley on architectural designs.”
Wiley and Jelinek seemed to be working harmoniously by the time the Pulaski project was moving along, yet facing criticism that was now coming from inside the MPS administration building.
In February 1938, school board member John Westphal suggested that MPS return to hiring outside architects for its building projects.
“It is time for our department to have competition,” he said. “We can’t go wild again the way we did on the Pulaski High School. There are plenty of complaints on that and I admit I made a mistake when I voted to approve the plans for it.”
Then, in June, a special committee made up of school board members and citizens said there was “waste and incompetence in planning and construction of schools,” leading school board member Peter Schoemann – who also served as president of the Milwaukee Building Trades Council – to demand removal of the word “incompetence.”
“It would be foolish for the school board to accept the report which charges some of our employees with incompetence. The charge of incompetence is a reflection upon the school board itself. It is up to us to do something about it.”
Another member, Martin Baumann, said that because the committee’s report made “grave accusations,” the issue should be investigated further and that Wiley and Jelinek, along with assistant superintendent Dr W. W. Theisen and heating and ventilating engineer Edward Johns, should be given the chance to respond.
Others, like board member George Strehlow – who sat on the buildings committee – had their claws out, saying, “I have always believed that our school buildings were too expensive. Marble in schools ... that’s unnecessary and too costly. The school board architectural department needs a jacking up.”
At the same time, the board decided to take Wiley and Jelinek off the job of designing the new Gaenslen – as a replacement to the Layton Park Open-Air School – after they presented two sets of plans, one estimated at $400,000 and another at $500,000.
Instead, the board hired Eschweiler & Bauer, capping the cost at $330,000 plus 6 percent architects' fee while requiring that their sketches comply with ones already done by Wiley.
“We’re handing this to Bauer and Eschweiler on a silver platter,” countered Jelinek, noting that the MPS department had already done much of the work.
“The American Institute of Architects ... and I’ve belonged to it for 16 years ... calls this cutthroat competition,” added Wiley.
Orthopedic surgeon Dr. Walter P. Blount – who contributed his expertise to the plans – cautioned, “You must remember that this building is to take care of (disabled) children, not well children. It requires a different design from most schools. Don’t sacrifice too much for economy. Don’t decrease the size of the school and eliminate necessities. It is unwise to condense the size of the building just for economy.”
Though Wiley wasn’t pulled off the Manitoba project, his original $200,000 plans were trimmed to a design estimated to cost half that.
In March 1939, with the opening still a few months out, an investigation into the Pulaski design led consultants Boynton & Johnson to suggest the project could have cost $612,259 less. More than a third of that savings would’ve come from, “installing a unit heating and ventilation system in each room instead of the split system operating from a central plant.”
Other alleged savings included things like $11,619 for the elevator, to which Wiley countered that it was necessary for students with disabilities.
Wiley's Aug. 22, 1939 response to the report (on which he collaborated with Johns) – which was meant to serve as a guide for future building projects – cut the potential savings from $612,259 to a much lower $185,925, noting, "this hypothetical saving is less than 8 percent of the cost of the building and less than one-half the difference between the sums of the high and low bids."
But the point had been made and Pulaski would, in fact, be the last of the ornate Milwaukee public school buildings.
Interestingly, in February 1939, with the building just a few months from completion, the Milwaukee Journal wrote, "as school buildings go, Pulaski is 'nice.' The interior ... on the whole will not give the appearance of an ornately finished building."
It echoed the argument that some features considered by critics to be elaborate were in fact likely to be cost-savers over time.
"Students will not be able to carve their initials in the balustrades, which are structural glass," which the paper added was pretty much unbreakable.
Surely, it seemed to suggest, part of the cost was due to the fact that, "it is immense, sprawling about three blocks. Pulaski contains 54 classrooms, three arts laboratories, two laboratories each for mechanical drawing and general science and one laboratory each for biology, physics and chemistry. It has four industrial shops, a household arts suite with a model three-room home, study halls, an activity room, a student publications room, two gymnasiums (boys' and girls'), a swimming pool, an auditorium with a capacity for 1,30o persons and a cafeterial and kitchen. ... There are six small music practice rooms."
(In addition, Pulaski, like King had an "English Room" theater space and a model apartment in its home ec department. A small third-floor space on the originals plans is marked "museum" and there was a two-story space called the "students' club room.")
The school, which Jelinek explained was designed to be expandable (hence the classrooms on only one side of the corridors, the paper reported him explaining), was meant to serve 2,600 students.
So, next time you wonder “why don’t they build them like they used to” ...
World War II paused the construction of new school buildings after Pulaski and Manitoba and building didn't resume until Grassold & Johnson were hired to design 81st Street School in 1948.
By that time, architectural tastes had changed and the modernist architects now in vogue eschewed the kind of detail that drew criticism in early projects anyway. Thus came a major change in the appearance of schoolhouses in Milwaukee and beyond.
As for Wiley, he designed no fewer than 17 MPS buildings, from Kozy to King, Steuben to Story, Morgandale to Manitoba, Fernwood, Neeskara and more, along with countless additions, remodels and other projects. He also designed South and North Stadiums.
Between Pulaski and his retirement in 1951, Wiley worked with outside architects on preliminary designs and final plans for new buildings and other work.
Wiley retired a year after the mandatory retirement age to help work on MPS’ five-year building plan and moved to Oshkosh where he worked part-time at the Auler, Dreger, Wiley & Wertsch architectural and engineering firm. He was succeeded by Samuel J. Sullivan.
In 1966 – three years after his wife Grace (nee Wilson) died – he moved to Santa Rosa, California, where died of pneumonia in 1969.
Nearly 75 years after his retirement all of his school buildings – though neither stadium – still dot the landscape all around Milwaukee, including his beautiful swan song, which for the past 10 years has been home not only to the traditional Pulaski High program, but also to the Carmen Southeast High School non-instrumentality charter program.
The two schools pretty much split the building in half and share spaces like the auditorium, cafeteria, gym and pool.
(Pulaski got three additions – a music addition to the west, a shop addition to the north and an athletic addition to the west – in 1974.)
But soon that will change, as the charter school is building a $55 million building of its own down the street on 20th and Oklahoma. Pulaski High School will then be able to once again occupy the entire school, which will allow its enrollment to continue to grow.
The reasons for that growth, says O’Brien, are manifold.
“It would probably be just stabilizing the school environment,” he says, “and we have 400-500 students here in the bilingual program and probably about 50 ESL students.”
“The bilingual department tells me we're running out of seats on this side of town,” adds Zombor.
“Then I'd say the IB program,” O’Brien says, noting that Pulaski has been offering International Baccalaureate programs since 2019. “Besides some brand recognition, the IB program has changed the master schedule to have department planning time. This has really helped give some structure to how we teach the kids.
“Next year we want everybody to take at least one Diploma Program course. But our Career Program is what we're really trying to expand and grow. Right now we are looking at graphic arts and the auto program here.”
The automotive program – the largest such program in a Wisconsin high school – currently has about 100 students enrolled and they learn how to diagnose and repair cars.
They rebuild engines, rotate tires, do oil changes, They’re learning marketable career skills and STEM subjects at the same time.
The two ASE-accredited repair shops are impressive. Just recently, Snap-on donated $17,000 worth of tools to the program. A third space is a paint and body shop that has been down since a staff member left, but O’Brien hopes to reopen it for the coming school year.
(A storage area even has an old MFD ladder truck.)
While visitors to Pulaski and some former and current staff surely appreciate the care, effort and expense put into the building back in the 1930s, not everyone does, according to Principal O’Brien.
“There are people that come by and they look at things that I don’t even notice,” he says. “I am a fan of it, but I wouldn’t say I’m actively (paying attention) to these things.”
Yet I can’t help but think that being in a beautiful environment affects people’s moods, their vibe. Who wouldn’t prefer to be in a lovely place than an oppressive one? Who doesn't work better in a nice place?
And, O’Brien and the kids do notice things ... just look at his shoes.
He has a red pair and a blue pair ... one for A days on the school calendar and the other for B days.
“I wear blue shoes and red shoes depending on the day,” O’Brien says, noting that it simplifies his morning routine. “I do it partially for myself because I’ll look down and think, “OK, it’s an A day.
“(Students) still come up to me now, and ask ‘A day or B day’ and I’ll say, ‘look at the shoes’.”
(NOTE: Milwaukee Health Department inspectors found rodent droppings in Pulaski High School's kitchen recently, but after a re-visit the school was cleared to reopen the kitchen.)
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.
