Hidden History of Milwaukee by Robert Tanzilo

Author:Robert Tanzilo
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
Published: 2014-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

Like the Jefferson School, the former Clybourn Street/Mary Hill School retains classrooms that are mostly intact. Fortunately, the building’s collection of unusual radiators remains, too.

The school’s entry staircase was, at some point, replaced with the current porch. A large warehouse structure was added to the back, apparently in the 1940s, and that space was later enlarged, too.

The basement is exactly what you’d expect: rusticated stone foundation topped with Cream City brick walls with a small boiler room, though when it was built, the school was likely heated by stoves. By 1894, it had a boiler for steam and hot-air heating.

The building is owned now by Stephen Pevnick, who runs his Pevnick Design company out of the back. In the old building is a range of tenants, including musicians and dance studios.

The big surprise for me was to hear about Pevnick’s work and to see it in action. Pevnick, an art professor at UW–Milwaukee, began looking into ways to intertwine rhythm and water in the 1970s and created technologies to make those explorations reality. He started his company, Pevnick Design Inc., and began creating graphical waterfalls and other water features and selling them around the United States to malls, office buildings, casinos, trade shows and the like. He pretty much had the sector sewn up until success propelled him to Europe, at which point larger companies with the financial wherewithal to do so were able to copy his work. But Pevnick and his Milwaukee-based company are still in demand. Just look at the map on the shop wall. Each pin denotes a job completed. The map—from the United States to Asia to Europe to the Middle East to Central America—looks like a pincushion.

Pevnick did many trade show exhibits for the likes of Kohler, Daimler Chrysler and Jeep. In 2006, he did an amazing display in Bangkok for a huge party thrown by the king of Thailand. He designed a water feature for the Atlanta Olympics. More recently, his work is what doused the band Fun on the Grammys telecast. In the summer of 2013, Pevnick created a fountain for Nestle that responded to questions posed by passersby.

Pevnick has thrown open the doors to his studio and to the former Clybourn Street/Mary Hill School as part of Historic Milwaukee Inc.’s Doors Open Milwaukee event. So you might get a chance to peek inside someday, too.

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