I'm watching a high-rise go up. I've never had a chance to do this before. Last year, going to school in Kenosha, watching the day-to-day construction of a high-rise condominium building was something I simply didn't have the opportunity to do. Kenosha is a very nice little town, but its construction market has yet to include things like high-rises. I think the hospital downtown has ten stories. Mostly, though, its downtown is defined by two-story antique stores and greasy-spoon-type diners, the kind of restaurant where the same group of elderly men has congregated at the same place for twenty years, and has no intentions of moving.
I guess
watching high-rises being built wasn't on my list of Things I Want to Do when I
was living in Kenosha. Now I know that's because I didn't know what I was
missing. This year I've been living on East Gorham Street, and from the
entrance to my apartment, which is on the rear of the building, I've been
getting a postcard view of a high-rise condominium building go through all its
stages of construction. I would now highly recommend the experience to anyone.
When I moved to Madison in September, the structure was nothing but
three levels of poured concrete and a lot of tarp. But as the months
progressed, the building rose upwards quickly, and I became more and more
interested as every new story was layered over the last one. It's strangely
fascinating to see how this works— the construction of each new level is
preceded by the erection of a bunch of steel beams, the concrete is poured into
shape for the roof, and then the walls are put in, so by the end of a couple
days you have a pretty good idea of what the whole thing is going to look like,
windows and all. At least that's how I think it works. I'm not actually up
there, and I don't watch every minute of the construction, so I might be wrong.
I can see
the building from where I work, too, on Williamson Street. It looks much
squatter from there than it does from my apartment, but it's still impressive.
From the angle I have at work, the sun sets directly behind the Square every
evening, and you can see the sunset through the top three floors because
they're not complete. They're all still just girders and plywood.
This
building is called the "Capitol Point Condominiums." It's fourteen
stories tall, and it's only with a deeply-felt sense of disappointment that I
report it looks like that's as tall as it's going to get. I realize that 14
stories is plenty tall for the Capitol Square, and that any more would probably
be in violation of a zoning ordinance, but watching this thing go up has become
outright addictive. I keep hoping that I'll wake up one morning and the
developer will have stuck on another level during the night.
To avoid
sounding like some sort of sick fetishist, I will say that here is one
complaint I have: I don't like the color the developer chose for the brick.
Most of the building is already coated with sissy-looking, cream-colored
bricks, and it's simply not the color I would have chosen. Not that anybody's
asking me, or that I know the first thing about architecture or urban design or
am qualified in any way to make such judgments, but I've always thought bricks
should be, well, brick red. And I know, incidentally, that Milwaukee used to
build most of its structures with cream-colored brick, and that it still has
the nickname of the "Cream City," but I reluctantly stick with my
opinion. Don't get me wrong; Milwaukee is a splendid city, and I have nothing
against its predominant color. I've had some very nice times there. It's just
that I don't like the cream color specifically for the Capitol Point
Condominiums. Besides, for some reason, Milwaukee always shows up in my memory
as various shades of gray.
But the
cream-colored bricks aren't nearly enough to make me stop liking the building.
I still like its height, which magnificently fills in a hole in the skyline I
didn't even know was there. I like its shape, which is triangular and hip and
reminiscent of the Flatiron building. I like watching the tarp that still covers
the upper levels billow in the wind.
I think
this world-class aesthetic appeal is the reason I don't mind that the building
will surely attract yuppies to the neighborhood. I mean, I know yuppies will
move into it. This type of place is built for yuppies, and I guess for
empty-nesters, maybe, but instead of the usual working-class resentment and
that smug feeling of moral superiority I get when I see things that are built
exclusively for the well-off, this time I simply feel a sense of indulgence. "Aw,
let the yuppies have their stuff, it doesn't hurt anybody," is the closest
I can come to putting this strange, unprecedented sentiment into words.
To be sure,
as I was doing research on the building, I did feel an occasional twinge of
envy. On the developer's Web site
there were diagrams of all floor plans (up to 5000 sq. ft.!), complete with
decks and a room called a "powder," which I guess is a half-bath, and
real photographs of the views from these apartments. The views were amazing.
These people are going to have some seriously inspiring vistas to look out over
as they cook dinner, do housework, do drugs, have ritual sacrifices, or
whatever else it is that members of the condominium-buying class do with their
free time. I just wish I had any sort of comparison— I live in a basement
which 20 years ago was converted, very hastily it seems, from a typical
water-heating, mold-gathering cellar into a halfhearted attempt at an
apartment. The place is still having an identity crisis.
Because my
place is a basement apartment, we have no deck to look out over anything from.
There's a little wooden structure just outside our door on which you can smoke
cigarettes, but don't try and lean against anything, because for some reason
none of the railings are actually attached to any of the other ones. Plus, and
I think my roommate Andy would find this funny, we do not have "generous
ceiling heights (that) range from 9 to 11 feet." Andy is six feet four
inches tall. The top of his head is exactly eight inches lower than our
ceiling, except where the water main goes across the hall, and there I believe
he actually has to duck. Eleven-foot ceilings would be like a dream come true
for him.
Just for
the record, I don't want anyone to feel sorry for us. We're college students.
Our living situation is supposed to be comparable to that of war
refugees, or moles. It actually feels kind of cool to be my age and living in
an apartment in which important parts of the toilet regularly break, or where,
if you throw a pencil towards the ceiling, it sticks. This is the time to be
living in squalor, and we're happy with it.
But looking
up for the past six months at the Capitol Point Condominiums growing bigger and
bigger keeps me constantly reminded that not everyone lives like this. Some
people live in houses with heaters that do not require pliers to turn on and
off. The future Capitol Points Condominiums residents are almost certainly
members of this lucky group. And I realize that there is middle ground between
a decrepit basement apartment and a luxury high-rise condominium, so I suppose
that by comparing the two I'm painting the social classes of the United States,
or at least of Madison, in black and white. I don't want to do that. Also, I
don't want to forget how much fun watching this building go up really has been.
Despite the admittedly leftist viewpoint which makes me suspicious of the very idea
of luxury high-rise buildings, and bourgeois phrases like "acoustically
engineered building," or "sweeping views," I still think that fourteen
stories of windows lit up at night is a beautiful image.
Incidentally,
our mayor, Sue Bauman, belongs to that fortunate group that has already
purchased one of Capitol Point's 68 units. I hope she takes no offense to my
referral of her and her future neighbors as "yuppies." I used the
word only the nicest way. And I hope Ms. Bauman enjoys her new status as a
downtown resident and luxury condominium owner. She will be occupying a
building to which I have grown very attached in these past six months.
And in
another six months, instead of looking at an empty hull of a building, standing
empty but full of promise, I'll look up and see crowds of people out on their
decks. It will be a building brimming with life, with couples entering and
exiting at street level, groups meeting and chatting on the promenades, windows
being thrown open for fresh air. Maybe one of those windows will be opened by
the mayor, eager for a breath, or a moment's stunning view of her Isthmus.
Maybe I'll see her, recognize her, and wave up to her. Maybe she'll wave back,
congenially.
As long as
she's not performing a ritual sacrifice at the time.
-Connor
Wood