Unique Doors Open Tour Spotlights Modernist Churches

“Doors Open Milwaukee will be like getting a backstage pass to buildings’ restricted areas that visitors never see. Churches, museums, theaters, clubs, office buildings, markets, shops, historic homes, cultural centers, architectural firms – any site of historic, cultural or architectural interest.”

– Announcement for first Doors Open Milwaukee, September 2011

From its inception, the hugely popular Doors Open Milwaukee, which returns this weekend for its 14th iteration, has included scores of houses of worship among its offerings. And why not? We’re “The City of Steeples”, after all, where grand churches tower over humble bungalows in the oldest parts of town.

While thousands pass by the city’s churches every day, it is usually only the congregants who ever enter the places. The neighborhood ecumenism of Doors Open sponsor Historic Milwaukee, Incorporated, which celebrates its 50th anniversary this year, gives a chance for outsiders to see what parishioners experience within their sacred confines. Over the years the tours included such gems as St. James Episcopal Church in Downtown, and the Summerfield Methodist Church in Yankee Hill.

Neither are on the tour this year. In fact, neither is even a church today. The Episcopal church is now the St. James 1868, a wedding and events venue. Summerfield, as Urban Milwaukee reported, is to be redeveloped as housing by a Chicago firm. Even so, there remain 20 churches among the 156 locations for this year’s Doors Open.

Capitol Drive as Hub of Modernist Churches

Milwaukee architectural historian Eric Vogel, an architect himself, decided a church tour of Capitol Drive would serve as an instructive timeline of the urban area’s westward expansion. Vogel is a 2024-25 scholar-in-residence at the Taliesin Institute in Scottsdale, Arizona specializing in Midcentury architecture, of which, providentially, many significant examples of ecclesiastic structures of the era exist on Capitol Drive. With a team of volunteers, he developed “The Divine Line — A Tour of Midcentury Churches with Doors Open”.

The self-driving tour encompasses 12 stops, beginning with Kingo Lutheran Church of Shorewood in the east and culminating in the remarkable Garden of Eternal Life Mausoleum in Wisconsin Memorial Park. If you want to spend eternity in a midcentury version of the future, this is the place for you.

Along the way are such structures as Benediction Lutheran Church, 8675 W. Fond du Lac Ave. The soaring six-sided design, which pays homage to the Star of David, was designed by Donald Grieb in 1964 — the same time as his Mitchell Park Domes, now threatened, were built. The building shows “Grieb’s fascination with geometry and building technology,” according to the guide. Also on the tour is Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church, 9400 W. Congress St., one of the last commissions by early modernist and Wisconsinite Frank Lloyd Wright.

What is Docomomo?

Vogel is the chair of the Wisconsin branch of Docomomo, founded in the Netherlands in 1988. “Docomomo (pronounced doh-koh-moh-moh) stands for the Documentation and Conservation of Modern Movement buildings, sites, neighborhoods, landscapes, and allied arts,” the group’s mission statement explains. Vogel led the unsuccessful effort to save the Forest Home Library, which was demolished in 2021. The group is working to identify buildings throughout the state. [Full Disclosure: Vogel is also the editor of the upcoming Milwaukee Moderns, a book about modernism in this city. I will be contributing a chapter to the book, but have had no involvement in the upcoming tour.]

How to Join the Tour

All of the sites on the Divine Line tour are free and open to the public as part of Doors Open. However, Vogel and his team have created a booklet highlighting the structures on the Docomomo tour, and docents will be at each location from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, September 28th. It will be the first curated tour hosted by the group.

Attendees are to begin their tour at Kingo Lutheran Church of Shorewood, 1225 E. Olive St., between 10 a.m. and noon, where, for $15, they will receive a copy of the tour guide, which includes suggested stops along the way — even for lunch at a custard stand. The complete tour experience should take from 3 to 5 hours.

To register, go to this Eventbrite site.