A "Milwaukee in Stone and Clay" Companion, Part 1: A Cast Masterpiece | The Iron Block (1861)
(Last Updated on February 2, 2025)
This new series complements my recently published guidebook, Milwaukee in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Cream City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it MSC.
The MSC section and page references for the building featured here: 5.11; pp. 74-76.
Looking southwestward at the E. Wisconsin Avenue facade,
My book's title notwithstanding, the list of geologically derived building materials extends beyond those made of stone and from clay. The Iron Block, one of the Juneau Town neighborhood's most venerable office buildings, is a good demonstration of that.
This priceless exemplar of Civil-War-era architecture features, on its northern and western elevations, Venetian-Renaissance facades of cast iron forged in New York City and then shipped to Milwaukee by Great Lakes schooner.
Before the development of the great iron ranges of the Lake Superior region in the late 1800s, most American iron ore was mined from coastal bog-iron deposits and then, increasingly, from inland sedimentary deposits rich in iron-oxide minerals.
Unlike wrought iron, also widely used in nineteenth-century architecture, cast iron has a relatively high carbon content and requires complete melting and setting in molds.
The Iron Block is also notable for its use of the inverted-arch type of foundation under its cast-iron facades. This unusual method of supporting a building's superstructure, with downward-pointing arches of brick set between stone piers, was thought to the best solution for waterlogged and unstable substrates. Downtown Milwaukee's is certainly a good example of that. There up to 170 ft (52 m) of oozy fluviatile and glacial sediments blanket the Silurian dolostone bedrock.
This site and many others in Milwaukee County are discussed at greater length in Milwaukee in Stone and Clay (NIU Imprint of Cornell University Press).
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Milwaukee in Stone and Clay" Companion album. Also, while you're at it, check out my Architectural Geology of Milwaukee album, too. It contains quite a few photos and descriptions of Cream City sites highlighted in other series of mine.
A "Milwaukee in Stone and Clay" Companion, Part 1: A Cast Masterpiece | The Iron Block (1861)
(Last Updated on February 2, 2025)
This new series complements my recently published guidebook, Milwaukee in Stone and Clay: A Guide to the Cream City's Architectural Geology. Henceforth I'll just call it MSC.
The MSC section and page references for the building featured here: 5.11; pp. 74-76.
Looking southwestward at the E. Wisconsin Avenue facade,
My book's title notwithstanding, the list of geologically derived building materials extends beyond those made of stone and from clay. The Iron Block, one of the Juneau Town neighborhood's most venerable office buildings, is a good demonstration of that.
This priceless exemplar of Civil-War-era architecture features, on its northern and western elevations, Venetian-Renaissance facades of cast iron forged in New York City and then shipped to Milwaukee by Great Lakes schooner.
Before the development of the great iron ranges of the Lake Superior region in the late 1800s, most American iron ore was mined from coastal bog-iron deposits and then, increasingly, from inland sedimentary deposits rich in iron-oxide minerals.
Unlike wrought iron, also widely used in nineteenth-century architecture, cast iron has a relatively high carbon content and requires complete melting and setting in molds.
The Iron Block is also notable for its use of the inverted-arch type of foundation under its cast-iron facades. This unusual method of supporting a building's superstructure, with downward-pointing arches of brick set between stone piers, was thought to the best solution for waterlogged and unstable substrates. Downtown Milwaukee's is certainly a good example of that. There up to 170 ft (52 m) of oozy fluviatile and glacial sediments blanket the Silurian dolostone bedrock.
This site and many others in Milwaukee County are discussed at greater length in Milwaukee in Stone and Clay (NIU Imprint of Cornell University Press).
The other photos and discussions in this series can be found in my "Milwaukee in Stone and Clay" Companion album. Also, while you're at it, check out my Architectural Geology of Milwaukee album, too. It contains quite a few photos and descriptions of Cream City sites highlighted in other series of mine.