The Wisconsin Gas Building (originally Milwaukee Gas Light Building) is a classic stepped

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...

tower located in downtown

Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee is ...

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

at 626 East Wisconsin Avenue. It was designed by architects

Eschweiler & Eschweiler Alexander Chadbourne Eschweiler (August 10, 1865 – June 12, 1940) was an American architect with a practice in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He designed both residences and commercial structures. His eye-catching Japonist pagoda design for filling st ...

and completed in 1930 using differing materials on the exterior to graduate from dark to light.

Description

MilwaukeeGasLightBuilding architecturaldetails

Locally distinct light colored

brick A brick is a type of block used to build walls, pavements and other elements in masonry construction. Properly, the term ''brick'' denotes a block composed of dried clay, but is now also used informally to denote other chemically cured cons ...

called Cream City brick crowns the high-rise. Copper panels adorn the spandrels, while organic foliage patterns and terracotta designs decorate the façade. The building stands 250 feet tall and has 20 floors. Demolished to make room for the building in 1930, a Prohibition-era speakeasy was formerly on the site. Wisconsin Gas was purchased by

Wisconsin Energy WEC Energy Group is an American company based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin that provides electricity and natural gas to 4.4 million customers across four states. Subsidiaries Wisconsin * We Energies, the umbrella name for Wisconsin Electric Power ...

in 2001. During the consolidation of Wisconsin Gas into

's neighboring downtown corporate headquarters, the Wisconsin Gas Building was sold to a developer in 2004 who converted it into leased office space.

Weather flame

weather beacon A weather beacon is a beacon that indicates the local weather forecast in a code of colored or flashing lights. Often, a short poem or jingle accompanies the code to make it easier to remember. The beacon is usually on the roof of a tall buil ...

shaped as a natural gas flame was added to the top of the Wisconsin Gas Building in 1956. It indicates the weather forecast by its color and flicker. The flame was turned off in 1973 because of that year's energy crisis. It was turned on again in 1985. The flame stands 21 feet tall and weighs four tons. In 2013, the neon tube lighting system was replaced with an LED lighting system. The new LED system allows millions of colors and various other lighting schemes outside the traditional red-gold-blue system, including charity efforts and sports team colors. There is a rhyme created to help remember the colors. Most of the rhyme is consistent, with variations in the final line: :When the flame is red, it's warm weather ahead. :When the flame is gold, watch out for cold. :When the flame is blue, there's no change in view. :When there's a flickering flame, expect snow or rain! and :When the flame is red, warm weather is ahead. :When the flame is gold, watch out for cold. :When the flame is blue, there's no change in view. :Where there's agitation, expect precipitation. The light has been used as a harbor marker and navigation aid by mariners in

Lake Michigan Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...

over the years.

References

External links

Wisconsin Gas Building
at Emporis
Developer converting gas building to office power

{{coord, 43.03940, -87.90296, format=dms, display=title, type:landmark Art Deco architecture in Wisconsin Skyscraper office buildings in Milwaukee Landmarks in Wisconsin Headquarters in the United States Office buildings completed in 1930 1930 establishments in Wisconsin