elainajohann_Doors Open Milwaukee

 On the weekend of Doors Open Milwaukee,  I visited the Charles Allis Art Museum and the North Point Water Tower. While rummaging through these locations I thought of a part in Nato Thompson’s writing about Experimental Geography, In Two Directions Geography as Art, Art as Geography. The idea of: “we make the world and, in turn, the world makes us” (Thompson). How the people who interact with these buildings effect what makes the building.

In the Charles Allis Art Museum there were many remnants left from when the building was the house of Charles Allis and his wife, Sarah. What I found most interesting was the old phones that look as if they were used to contact the other rooms in the house. They are a gorgeous piece of history of this house. Seeing things such as this always make me think of what life was like when this was in use. How those people through time now have a connection with me just because I stood in the same place looking at the same thing as they did viewing the same item as them. Along with the other items in the house: old bathroom fixtures and stoves and the strange item in the bathroom, the Safety Phlare Pump. To us today these are just antiques, a memory of the people who the items once belonged to. The people who once lived in this 

 house made it what it is and as a result the house has an effect on the people who lived there. Today the building is used for a much different purpose. The people who move through this space created a new meaning for this place. It became the result of what people were changing it through time.

The North Point Water Tower has a very different feel to the Allis house. The people who have interacted with it make this building interesting. Because of the rusting on the stairs, I was unable to climb to the top of the tower, but there still was a stunning view from the inside. This water tower is out of use and the last time it was open to the public was in 2005. What I found very interesting were the writings on the inside of the walls. The first was a note when I first entered say, “KEEP OUT: PRIVATE.” It left me questioning if this was written by employees of this space for the purpose to keep people out or as humorous graffiti. In the surrounding walls there were numerous amounts of graffiti placed by people trying to put their mark on this building. Much of which were dated 2012 in permanent marker. One dated from 4/15/47.  These people have shaped this space by leaving their own personal mark, leaving this building to form from the many people who have stepped inside.