Stonewater Partners Purchase Historic Milwaukee Office Building Portfolio
Los Angeles, California – September 1, 2006:
Stonewater Partners announced today that it has acquired a portfolio of
historically significant office buildings in downtown Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The
three buildings – Loyalty, Mackie, and Mitchell - have been landmarks in the
area since they were built in the late 1800s, and each is featured in the
National Register of Historic Places.
The Loyalty Building was built as the third corporate headquarters of the
Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company, and is now considered one of
Milwaukee's premier examples of the Richardsonian Romanesque style. The interior
features a truly grand open staircase with marble steps, highly ornamented
cast-iron railings and copper trimmed newel posts rising in a four-story atrium
with an arched cast iron skylight, and is reminiscent of the famous Bradbury
Building in downtown Los Angeles.
Commented Stonewater VP of Acquisitions Joshua Jeffers, a Wisconsin native, “The
Loyalty Building’s architectural highlights can be fully appreciated by future
generations thanks to the impeccable restoration and maintenance by the prior
ownership. It’s truly a one-of-a-kind building.”
The Mackie Building, formerly the Chamber of Commerce Building, lies directly
east of the Mitchell Building. It was built to accommodate the Grain Exchange (a
commodity trading room) and the offices of the Chamber of Commerce, and the
façade boasts sculptures of a bear and bull among other trade-related imagery.
From 1981 to 1983 an intensive restoration of the Grain Exchange was undertaken
by the Ashley Family to recreate one of the Midwest's most magnificent historic
interiors. The room features a series of colossal columns with gilded
Corinthian-like capitals incorporating steamship and locomotive motifs,
incredible frescoes of wheat sheave medallions encircled by Wisconsin wild
flowers, depictions of the Milwaukee Water Works, the Bay View Rollings Mills
and the Wisconsin State Seal. The themes of industry, agriculture,
transportation, trade and commerce are repeated throughout the room's décor. It
is one of the outstanding mural-ornamented Victorian commercial interiors in
America. Post-restoration, the Grain Exchange room is now utilized for private
meetings, weddings and banquets.
The Mitchell Building, completed in 1878, is Milwaukee's finest example of a
high style, French Second Empire Style commercial building. Eminent Milwaukee
architect Edward Townsend Mix designed the building for entrepreneur and
businessman, Alexander Mitchell.
Commenting on the transaction, David Stade, a Stonewater Principal originally
from Wisconsin, said "We are very excited to have been selected to continue the
Ashley Family’s stewardship of these amazing buildings. We feel very fortunate
to have been given the opportunity to carry that torch."
Jeffrey Toporek, also a Stonewater Principal, added, “This transaction
represents Stonewater’s commitment to acquiring value-add, historically and
architecturally significant properties across the country.”
|
