American Architects and Their Books, 1840-1915

Chapter VI. Edward Townsend Mix: Books and the Professional Architect in Nineteenth-Century Milwaukee

 V I E D WA R D T O W N S E N D M I X Books and the Professional Architect in Nineteenth-Century Milwaukee Chris Szczesny-Adams Edward Townsend Mix (1831–1890), a Milwaukee architect working 1855–90, owned a variety of architectural books that enhanced his professional practice (figure 6.1). Although not commonly recognized as a major figure in American architecture, Mix designed and built structures throughout the Midwest and played a critical role in Milwaukee’s architectural development. His designs encompassed various architectural styles, including Italianate, Second Empire, Romanesque, and Queen Anne, all of which were reflected in his book collection. To understand E. Townsend Mix, his books, and his impact on Milwaukee’s architectural development, one must consider a variety of issues. It is important, first, to correlate the development of Milwaukee as a city, Mix’s place in it, and his architectural designs; second, to observe how his New Haven, Connecticut, background exposed him to the use of books within an architectural practice; third, to discuss the variety and substance of the architectural works in his library. Finally, one must discover how Mix’s designs demonstrated the influence of his architectural book collection on his work. As Milwaukee’s principal late-nineteenthcentury architect, his lineage, training, and architectural books reflected his status as a professional and provided the background for his innovative and cosmopolitan designs for himself, his clients, and the upper Midwest. Milwaukee is known for its strong cultural heritage derived from the German, Polish, Italian, and Irish communities that developed there during the nineteenth 150 chris szczesny-adams century. In 1890, the year Mix died, the U.S. census identified Milwaukee as the “Most Foreign City in the United States”: 72 percent of the its 285,315 residents were of German descent. Its rich German heritage aided in developing Milwaukee into a modern city. Yet it is important to remember that many of its first largescale real estate developers were not German, and those were the men for whom Mix worked. Milwaukee’s antebellum architecture was developed by Yankees with ethnic backgrounds primarily from the British Isles, who saw in the city an opportunity to obtain wealth. fig 6.1 Edward Townsend Mix, ca. 1880. Photo courtesy of the Milwaukee County Historical Society. edward townsend mix 151 In 1856, Mix arrived in Milwaukee after working for a year in Chicago with W. W. Boyington. The city was barely ten years old, and Wisconsin had only recently (in 1848) become a state.The majority of the buildings in Milwaukee, the state’s largest city, had been constructed hastily of wood and were in need of repair. In order to stay competitive in attracting desirable residents, such as the educated and entrepreneurial New Englanders and New York Knickerbockers who were among its early settlers, Milwaukee in the 1850s needed to shed its appearance as a frontier outpost and cultivate a metropolitan outlook. The 1850 census indicated that of the 31,077 people residing in Milwaukee County, only 1,187 could not read,which suggests a highly educated population.The proportion of foreign-born residents in the entire state of Wisconsin was approximately 36 percent, which included a significant number of immigrants from British America and England. These statistics highlight the importance of the original Yankee population that settled Milwaukee, an importance that has been eclipsed in modern memory by the predominance of later immigrant populations. Many of Mix’s commissions reflected the close relationships he had with the Yankee businessmen, industrialists, and entrepreneurs of the city, including two of the most prominent, the meatpacker John Plankinton and the banker and railroad magnate Alexander Mitchell.These men, and many of their friends and colleagues as well, employed Mix to create lavish commercial, residential, religious, and institutional structures. Mix even designed the building for the Milwaukee Club, a predominantly Yankee businessmen’s organization whose membership included only a few of the leading German businessmen. Of its members, approximately twenty were documented patrons of Mix—who was also a member. His association with this group reflected a system of patronage that lasted for approximately twenty- five years during the nascent city’s largest period of architectural and economic expansion. It was through the patronage of such men that many of Mix’s buildings were realized.For these patrons Mix created a variety of structures in cosmopolitan...