When Bob Lemke looks at Wauwatosa’s City Hall, he sees a building worth saving.
Informing that judgment are Lemke’s professional experience as a scholar of architecture and historic preservation and the nearly 70 years that city residents have used the building as a centrally located civic hub. On Sept. 8, Lemke took the first step in what he hopes will be a successful effort to stop the city from tearing down and rebuilding the old City Hall and library. He filed an application seeking a historic designation for the structure on the southwest corner of Wauwatosa and North avenues.
Subscribe for free to receive the latest Tosa news — or become a paid member and support more reporting like this.
“If the city declares it historic, then they can’t tear it down,” Lemke, a longtime Tosa resident and retired Milwaukee School of Engineering professor, told Tosa Forward News in a phone interview.
Yet even Lemke acknowledges that he faces an uphill battle. The Wauwatosa Common Council voted in July in favor of a plan to replace the existing building with a modernized new building at an estimated cost of about $107 million. Lemke eventually would need to get the Common Council to approve any historic designation — on a building the council already has agreed has outlived its functionality.