Geology of Fieldstone & Cobblestone Buildings, Part 21: Boulders and Brutalism; Central United Methodist Church, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA (1980)

Facing southwestward and looking at the church's West Wisconsin Avenue facade.

In all my explorations I have yet to come across any one architectural style I categorically dislike. However, the one embodied here probably comes closest to my issuing a blanket condemnation. As I've written in my forthcoming Chicago Suburbs in Stone and Clay, "Every city of decent size needs an example of Brutalism, just to remind us of what we hope we’ve emerged from."

And in my recently published Milwaukee in Stone and Clay, I liken this church to an ICBM silo and also note that "one could plunk it down on the set of Blade Runner 2049 without a second thought."

However, the Central United also has some truly laudable aspects. For example, when it was new it was a sort of ecological-architecture forerunner, with solar power and a green (i. e., vegetation-covered) roof.

And an attempt was made to build it into rather on top of its local landscape, presumably for the sake of energy efficiency. One aspect of this is the sloping mantles of fieldstone that sit in various places along its exterior.

But there's no doubt about it. This structure is the one most atypical fieldstone building I feature in this series. Indeed, it's mostly made of concrete instead. But, as we'll see in the photos that follow, there is a lot of geology to scrutinize as one gets closer. For the boulders used here are erratics that were transported from much more northern locales by a Pleistocene ice sheet.

This site and many others in Milwaukee County are discussed at greater length in Milwaukee in Stone and Clay (NIU Imprint of Cornell University Press).

And to peruse the other photos and descriptions of this series, visit my Geology of Fieldstone & Cobblestone Buildings album.

Taken in: United States / Wisconsin / Milwaukee / Concordia (show map)

Taken on: December 14, 2021

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Sets appears in: • Architectural Geology of Milwaukee • The Beauty of Building Materials more » • Geology of Fieldstone & Cobblestone Buildings • Grab Bag of All Things Concrete • Natural History: Wisconsin • Sacred Places and Spaces • Urban Exposures: La città esaminata « less

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Camera: Canon PowerShot SX530 HS, f/4.5, 1/1000 sec, 4.3mm, ISO 200 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Canon PowerShot SX530 HS
Aperture:	f/4.5
Exposure Time:	0.001 sec (1/1000)
Focal Length:	4.3mm
ISO:	200
Exposure Bias:	0 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Color Space:	Uncalibrated
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