City Selling Historic Brady Street Building
A grotesque will keep watch over any future owner, as will DCD.
1115-1117 E. Brady St. Photo by Graham Kilmer.
A rare redevelopment opportunity has emerged on Milwaukee’s Lower East Side.
The City of Milwaukee is selling a mixed-use building it acquired through property tax foreclosure.
The three-story building at 1115-1117 E. Brady St. is available for $280,000. The city is accepting bids through a request-for-proposals process.
Since 2000, the building was best known for its first-floor tenant, Dragonfly Vintage Goods and Gifts. After a 25-year run in two states, the store closed in 2016.
Owner John A. Thurman cycled through a handful of tenants in the ensuing years, including clothing store Usman La’Aro and CBD store Purple Reign, before losing the building through property tax foreclosure in 2021. BlackInk Milwaukee, a tattoo business and the most recent tenant, closed in 2024. Thurman had owned the property since 1983.
The building is also identifiable by what sits atop it: a grotesque of a mythical winged creature. Artist Pamela Scesniak brought the design down to ground level in 1999 when she carved an homage of it into her Green Flow sidewalk art.
The upper floors contain two apartments, but as Michael Horne reported in 2016, they have long been vacant.
The 4,018-square-foot brick building was constructed in 1888 for Ignatz Trzebiatowski.
A 1990 federal historic designation submission refers to the property as “an excellent example of the district’s fine, 1880s vintage commercial architecture.” The design is referred to as “eclectic” for its mixing of architectural styles.
The building is part of the locally designated Brady Street Historic District, which will require any future owner to apply to the Historic Preservation Commission to make exterior modifications to the property.
Trzebiatowski also developed the neighboring building at 1692 N. Humboldt Ave. that is now home to Peter Sciortino’s Bakery.
The Department of City Development is requiring any buyer to maintain the property as fully taxable and with an active first-floor storefront. Suggested uses include “retail establishments, hardware store, deli, grocery store, art collective, arts and crafts, custard, bike shop, optical, yoga studio and restaurant.”
DCD will not accept a tavern, a former use of the building, among a number of other prohibited options.
Bids are due March 23.
The last time the city sold a Brady Street building was in 2015. Russ Drewry‘s Pepperoni Cannoli bought the two-story building at 827-829 E. Brady St. Frank Pecoraro, better known in his later years as “the Pepperoni Cannoli guy,” had lost the building for unpaid taxes. It was long used by his family’s meat market. Drewry, an architect, renovated the property and now leases the first floor to Chocolate Sommelier.
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