Milwaukee City Hall

Described in a web­page devoted to the Mil­wau­kee City Hall Restora­tion project as “a local icon whose archi­tec­tural char­ac­ter dis­tin­guishes it from all oth­ers in the nation”, this Flem­ish Renais­sance build­ing, com­pleted in 1895 and located at 200 E. Wells St. (see the map from the book here), is fea­tured in two impor­tant scenes in The Mys­tery of Things: the Pro­logue (read the excerpt here), and later in chap­ter one.

What inspired me most for the pur­poses of the novel was its (lit­er­ally) coffin-shaped rotunda, with seven tiers of bal­conies ris­ing above, framed with ornate iron grill­work. (If Hitch­cock had ever laid eyes on it, I have lit­tle doubt he would have used it in some Vertigo-like scene.)

These pic­tures hardly do it jus­tice, but may give the reader some sense of the truly ver­tig­i­nous interior:

First, a view look­ing up from the rotunda:

This is a view from the top floor, look­ing down at the rotunda (cov­ered with plas­tic at the time, dur­ing the renovation)–the coffin-shape is espe­cially appar­ent here:

You can down­load a cool 3D image of the build­ing here. For more infor­ma­tion on Mil­wau­kee City Hall, see the following:

• The Wikipedia entry
• Emporis.com’s Cityscape page
• Resto­ri­a­tion Project (archi­tec­tural study)
• The Fishmonger’s Place blog page
• July 2008 Mil­wua­kee Journal-Sentinel arti­cle on restora­tion progress