Someone asked a while back what there is to do in Milwaukee. Well a short walking distance from the Amtrak Depot and it's sign visible from the Depot is the Milwaukee Public Market:
https://milwaukeepublicmarket.org/
A little further walk if you like street window type shopping is the Historic Third Ward:
https://historicthirdward.org/
Note Milwaukee has a street car as well that originates from the Amtrak Intermodal Depot that you might want to ride first to orient yourself and avoid the walk to some of these places it is called the HOP and here is the schedule I think they are using now:
https://thehopmke.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/HOP_Schedules_TEMP.pdf
There is also the Milwaukee Art Museum on the lakefront. Milwaukee Public Museum and soon to be acquarium.
Milwaukee has a Indian Casino and Casino Hotel visible West of the Depot but I think it is crappy, however the parking structure gives you a real good view of Canadian Pacific's Muskego Yard and nobody bothers you if you want to loiter a bit in the parking structure to take pictures.
Milwaukee has a performing arts center with a medium-capacity theater and a regular sized multi-use concert hall/opera house/Broadway theater called Uhlein Hall. Harry Weese was the architect for the works, and my old firm, Bolt Beranek and Newman, were the acoustical consultants, with Larry Kirkegaard, Ron McKay, and Ted Shultz doing the room acoustics, Laymon Miller and George Kamperman the noise control, and Peter Tappen the unusual sound reinforcement system, and I helped Peter with the tests and adjustments. (I was also the straight-man for a number of Peter's magic shows.) The hall is unusual in several ways, and when I lived in the Chicago area 1967-1970, the Chicago Symnphony Orchestra liked ir better than their own Orchestra Hall. They used a special train on the C&NW. I rode with them a number of times.
Milwaukee has its own excellent orchestra and the "Florentine" Opera Company.
I need to add that Professor Lothar Cramer, who taught at a German University, was an advisory consultant for the project (along, of course, with Leo Beranek who taught at MIT), and Dr, Kramer expecially like Maeder's German restaurant. Hope it is still in business.
Update. They will be playing in the Bradley Center, which is an updatef old theater. They must think it is better?
https://onmilwaukee.com/articles/mso-first-look
Also worthwhile is the Milwaukee Art Museum's Quadracci Pavilion (2001) created by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.
daveklepper
What is the structure below the back of the stage? It almost looks like organ pipes
charlie hebdoUpdate. They will be playing in the Bradley Center, which is an updatef old theater. They must think it is better?
The Bradley Center is an updated 1931 Theatre that MSO bought and owns. Hence they make more money playing there than at the Marcus Performing Arts Center which is Accoustically near perfect. The Accoustics were tested at the Bradley Center (which they have to rent or lease) and found to be close but not as good as the Marcus Center.
MidlandMikeWhat is the structure below the back of the stage? It almost looks like organ pipes
Check out Daves picture, they are probably the pipe organ that can be lowered and raised to stage level and below.
daveklepperMilwaukee has a performing arts center with a medium-capacity theater and a regular sized multi-use concert hall/opera house/Broadway theater called Uhlein Hall.
Called the Marcus Center for peforming arts. Host to Broadway plays now because of the acoustics, MSO has to fight to get it but sometimes lands it as a venue. Marcus Corp is a large entertainment and hospitality firm in the Milwaukee area. I went to school with some of his kids back when I was a teenie boper. They had a home in the Elmbrook School District as did Basketball Coach Don Nelson (Milwaukee Bucks then Dallas Mavericks).
In a humorous note Mr Marcus looks kind of like a mobster.....heh. I forget which one it was though, too many Brothers in the business.
I remembered that Prof. Cramer's name is spelled with a "C" and made the correction.
The pipe-organ elevator was one of several innovations. Credit is also due to George Izenour (related to the former President despite the different spelling), who taught theater technology at Yale, who made the innovations work.
In an old thread, I posted how I met Golda Meir when she spoke at Uhlein Hall on a stop-over on a return trip by train from Brandon, Manitoba, the day after an evening in the cab of an E-7 due to meeting Phill Hastings on the overnight Winnapeg - St. Paul train. (I had entered the diner lounge with a copy of Trains in my hand, and he looked up and said "Hi! That's my picture on the cover.")
Comment by the president of the MSO:
"Niehaus visited other former movie theaters around the country that have been converted into concert halls. “Ours is the most shoebox shaped. Because it’s smashed in the middle of the block, [the original architects] were forced to create a theater that is long and skinny… For an orchestra, the optimum shape is a shoebox. All the great orchestra halls in the world are this shoebox shape.” The concert-going public anticipates what are promised to be excellent acoustics, which are certainly much better for unamplified orchestral sound than in the multi-purpose Uihlein Hall."
It's speculation until in person concerts resume since audiences influence the sound.
The ndifference between rehearsal and performance conditions in a concert hall, opera house, and theater, can be minimized by proper audience seat design, which was done in Uhlein Hall and the studio threater.
But in Boston Symphony Hall, one of the three classic Greats, at least when I was still able to visit, up to about 25 years ago, a huge velour curtain was draped to cover nearly all main-floor seats for rehearsals. I suspect this is still the practise if the hall has not had its seating changed.
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