While John Johnson, a researcher at Marquette University, was biking around Milwaukee last year, it didn’t take long for the architecture enthusiast to realize something about the city’s homes.
“I identified patterns, but they weren’t models that matched the north side, the south side, the east side,” Johnson said.
Johnson turned to a database from the City Appraiser’s Office, which attempts to assign an architectural taste to each of Milwaukee’s roughly 130,000 homes. When he mapped the data, he found that the city’s houses formed a surprising trend of concentric circles around the middle of the city, like rings on a tree trunk.
“Each layer preserves a unique set of dwellings, a testament to how a generation of Milwaukeeers lived and worked,” Johnson said.
On closer inspection, Milwaukee’s housing models reflect only aesthetic trends, but also how ancient occasions like immigration, war, and civil rights have shaped the city.
Architectural historian and Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Thomas Hubka, has dedicated his career to classifying everyday residential homes into other styles. people.
According to Hubka, many other people looking to classify everyday homes also put too much emphasis on external features than on interior design. But the city’s appraiser is trying to merge those two elements, which deserves “great applause,” he said.
“Every house is important,” Hubka said. There is dignity in both houses. And they have a story to tell.
This story is based on knowledge research through John Johnson, a researcher at Marquette University. Johnson’s paintings are based on asset records from the Milwaukee City Appraiser’s Office. The city’s appraiser explained more than a dozen architectural styles of houses, as well as various styles. of apartment buildings and condominiums, and residential plots of the city were assigned to one of the styles.
Johnson mapped knowledge through the face block, which includes all homes located in a hundred-block area, such as the 2100 block of East Holt Avenue. The Sentinel Journal color-coded the blocks of faces according to the taste of the house and adjusted the transparency to constitute the predominance of the taste of the house in that block. For example, Cape Cod homes account for approximately 15% of the homes in block 2100 of East Holt Avenue. As a result, this front block is coral colored with an opacity of 15%.
Contact Daphne Chen in dchen@gannett. com. Follow her on Twitter at @daphnechen_.
Contact Erin Caughey at ecaughey@gannett. com. Follow her on Twitter in @erin_caughey.