Building Description First Unitarian Church, Milwaukee Wisconsin
This Milwaukee Landmark is a sedate, attractive, Neo-Gothic design, with some details drawn from English Perpendicular Gothic. Excepting the newly completed (and unobtrusive) addition at the southeast corner of the building and the basement entry and basement windows created in the late 1950s, the exterior has seen no important modifications since the church was built in 1891-92. The auditorium also survives relatively unchanged, with the only significant alterations having been the modification of the chancel in 1939-40 and the installation of new light fixtures a few years later. Distinctive features include the carved stone label stops on the exterior, the auditorium's warm-hued stained glass windows, the ornamental sedilia, and a fine hammerbeam ceiling.
The church measures 119 feet long (east-west) and 61 feet 6 inches wide (north-south). The steeple is stated to be some 90 feet high, and the height of the nave ceiling at the ridge is said to be 65 feet.
Rock-faced, gray Bedford (Indiana) limestone was used for the west, north, and east walls, while the south wall consists chiefly of cream-colored local limestone trimmed about the windows with gray Bedford stone. The walls are reinforced at all outside corners except those on the northeast and southeast by angle and pier buttresses, some of which define the bays of the nave, along north and south sides. North and west walls are adorned with numerous carved stone label stops located at the terminations of the hoodmolds. At least one of these is a portrait of a prominent member of the church at the time of construction: William H. Metcalf's likeness appears on the center label stop of the west facade. Others take the form of human heads (probably not portraits), grotesques, and clumps of foliage.
The pointed arch is everywhere present in doors and windows. On the west (main) facade the visitor gains access to a recessed porch through two identical archways. Entrance to the vestibules on the north and south ends of this porch is through arched, oak, double doors stained almost black, with wrought-iron fittings and studded with large-headed iron nails. A similar double door leads into the tower vestibule on the north side. A recently added door leading into the stair well in the northwest vestibule is located below grade, is oak, and contains a colored, opaque glass window. Fire escape doors are located on the east and south sides.
Most of the church windows are set within pointed arches trimmed with rock-faced Bedford limestone and capped by hoodmolds with decorative label stops. The larger windows have wooden, Perpendicular Gothic tracery. Two large arched windows flank the recessed porch on the west facade and light the vestibules on the northwest and southwest. Two more windows of equal size and type are located within the porch on the west wall of the auditorium. Above the porch is a larger arched window flanked by two small lancets. A similar, though less colorful arched window, with a small lancet window above it, occurs in the northeast gable. Centered in the gable of the northwest vestibule are two lancet windows surmounted by a small quatrefoil window. The tower has two narrow windows with transoms on the second level and three lancet windows with a continuous sill on the third level. Grouped lancet windows light the north and south sides of the auditorium and the rooms on the east behind the chancel. Auditorium windows are beautifully executed abstract designs dominated by autumnal colors--olive, gold, yellow, brown--whereas in the north and east wall of the office and the east wall of the minister's study, windows are of gold and white glass. Basement windows, some of which are not original, are wooden, double-hung units with one-over-one lights.
There are three dormer windows on the north side, four on the east, five on the south, and four on the steeple, facing the compass points. Dormers on the north and south sides of the auditorium roof form clerestory windows. Those on the east elevation light the second story church school room. Steeple dormers and those of the north elevation have gables embellished with tracery. Steeple dormers are louvered.
Interior
The extensively remodeled basement contains kitchen, Sunday school rooms, other meeting rooms, lavatories, and heating plant.
The first floor is basically rectangular, oriented eastwest. The church (auditorium and balcony) seats some 450 people and is entered through vestibules in the northwest and southwest corners, the tower vestibule on the north, and a doorway off the new addition to the south. Nave, vestibules, and chancel occupy the west two-thirds of the first floor, while the east third contains the tower vestibule, church office and library (originally parlor), and the minister's study and a corridor (formerly kitchenette and library).
On the east, the second story contains a church school room and, at the far west end, the balcony (above the recessed entrance porch), At the south end of the church school room is a small stage.
In basement and auditorium, the finish is largely painted plaster. In the latter area the walls have been painted off-white, quite different from the original olive and red color scheme. The auditorium ceiling is framed by five hammerbeam arches resting on the exterior bearing walls and oak brackets that terminate in exquisitely carved stone corbels of naturalistic foliage, each unique. The delicacy of this stone carving is echoed in the intricately carved foliate ornament of the sedilia, and, as noted, both corbels and sedilia were the work of a single craftsman, Frank Steven. Careful attention to detail is also evident in the hammerbeam ceiling itself which is adorned with perpendicular Gothic tracery. Similar patterns are to be seen in the sedilia, chancel railing, organ chamber framework, and balcony railing. Above the painted oak wainscoting, the walls of the church office-library and tower vestibule are painted plaster. The second floor church school room, above office and study, has painted plaster walls and a steeply pitched, timber-framed ceiling with arches perforated by tracery and foils.
