MILWAUKEE (CBS58) -- Milwaukee City Hall is such an iconic piece of Milwaukee history that our CBS 58 Hometowns: History Edition had to make a stop there.
CBS 58 Morning News anchor Mike Curkov joined Milwaukee City Clerk Jim Owczarski on a tour that took him to the very top of City Hall.
It's a tour that the public can take too. At noon on the second and fourth Wednesday of each month from April to October, Owczarski leads a group from the remarkable atrium, to something even more amazing.
The tour goes to the top floor accessible to the public, the 8th floor, which formerly housed the city attorney's offices.
It keeps going up from there. The 9th floor looks like a kind of attic. There you can see the top of the skylight that caps the atrium. There are numbered storage rooms, some interesting metal work former the bones of the building, all leading down to room 901.
The bellman's quarters. A man and his family lived above city hall. as Owczarski understands it, he was charged with maintenance of the building's Solomon Juneau bell and clockface. As well as with making sure that bell rang on the hour.
"There's all kinds of urban legends of that come to me because I do this." said Owczarski. "One of them is that a child was born here."
Owczarski's tours are engaging and informative.
"The Solomon Juneau [bell] is 22,500 pounds. It is 10 times bigger than the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. Take that Philadelphia." he said. "And it was intended to be one of the largest bells in the world. What was really impressive about the bell, is that they installed it into a building that was the tallest occupied structure on the planet in 1895."
From the bellman's apartment, Owczarski leads the way up a tight, metal staircase, out a door and underneath the bell itself. We arrived just before 10:00 AM and watched as the mechanism that strikes the bell clanged 10 times off the Solomon Juneau.
And then we kept going up and even tighter metal spiral staircase into the clock tower. Standing just feet away from the actual clockface, you can see how it's lit (large panels of lights behind the face), how it works (these more car axle-looking than intricate gears and cogs), and the restoration work going all the way up to the flagpole.
Then Owczasrki led us to his favorite spot. What he calls 'The Mezzanine.' We're out in the elements, on the roof between the two high points of City Hall. It offers an amazing panoramic view of the Cream City.
"The number one thing I think about is the roof line in 1895. We have the Pabst Theater. We have two lovely cream city brick buildings and...we have the Germania building with it's lovely for copper domes." Owczarski said. "That's the roof line in 1895 and it really strikes you how this building would have tower over the landscape it would've been visible for miles."
It's clear Owczarski has a love for history, especially the history of Milwaukee and its City Hall.
"When you're touring Milwaukee City Hall take a look at all the signs of how they intended this building to be special." he said, "Yes, it's the tallest building in the world. Yes, it's constructed with 8 million bricks. Yes, one of the largest bells in the world one of the largest clock faces in the world, but it's more than the sum of parts. All those things are said or done with the idea of creating a public space. Space that is open to everyone that provides services to the community."
"There's been a detachment from that." Owczarski continued. "All of the other things that we stress tend to suck the life from so much of our architecture. This is the opposite of that. It was outsized. It was a statement and I think that that, to me, is insanely important."