1891, Walter A. Holbrook. 105 Park Ave.
Popular for public buildings in the 1880s and 1890s, Richardsonian Romanesque was noted for weighty massing, squat towers, broad arches, and expressive stonework. Holbrook, a former architectural associate of Milwaukee’s Edward Townsend Mix, applied all these forms to this library, now a museum. The two-story building is constructed of rusticated, rock-faced masonry, with a raised foundation of white Wauwatosa limestone and a super-structure of buff-colored Cleveland lime-stone. A two-story octagonal turret, a three-story square tower, and spiral bartizans make this small structure seem large. Between the towers, a gabled pavilion embraces a yawning, semicircular window, outlined with rusticated voussoirs.