Milwaukee’s Brady Street is a bustling place, filled with cars, buses and pedestrians. As drivers and walkers go by, they may not notice a series of faded pictures engraved in a green ribbon of concrete along Brady Street.
For years, the cryptic engravings have fascinated Bubbler Talk listener Paul Krajniak.
"The images are so interesting, and that’s why I wanted to reach out," Krajniak says. "They were like a mystery."
Every picture on the street is different. There’s one of fruits and vegetables. Another shows a bowling alley. There’s even a picture of two planets in space. Paul always believed that there was a deeper meaning to them.
"What were these things about," Paul asks. "What stories do they tell?"
To find out, I talked to Michael Sander, executive director of the Brady Street Improvement District. He says it was called the Green Flow.
"It was started in 1999, and it was a public project for art," Sander says. "The story behind it is really cool."
The Green Flow project was led by two women—Ellen Callahan, former president of Milwaukee Business Improvement District and Julilly Kohler, former president of the New Brady Street Area Association. They decided to use part of the sidewalk for a public art project honoring the history of Brady Street.
Artist Pamela Scesniak took on the challenge. She spent years researching Brady Street’s past and creating 86 pictographs. In a book she wrote about the project, Scensniak estimates each one took about 25 hours to produce, including four hours spent on carving each pictograph into the sidewalk. The Green Flow project was completed in the summer of 1999.
Many of the pictographs represent former Brady Street businesses. For example, at 1330 Brady Street, there’s a pictograph of two tuxedos side by side. Michael Sander explains one of them has a wad of dollar bills stuffed in a pocket, and the other looks like it has a boutonniere in its pocket. The pictograph refers to an old laundry business. Now, there’s a seafood restaurant where it used to be.
At 1338 Brady Street, there’s another pictograph. This one is an image of a small ferret. It represents the Eastside Fur Shop, which was originally established in 1917 and operated for many years.
"Now I’m picturing people walking down the street with their buggies going to a fur shop, and I see a black and white picture in my head." Sander says.
The Green Flow’s green color is an homage to St. Hedwig’s Roman Catholic Church on the corner of Brady and Humboldt. Early in Brady Street’s history, the church’s copper roof was green, due to oxidation. In the 1800s, the church was a gathering place for the community’s Polish immigrants.
Also, the reason why this project “flows” is because of the waters that run underneath the street, from the Milwaukee River to Lake Michigan. In the Green Flow, the water is represented by a wave pattern connecting the space between pictographs.
Sander says the Brady Street Improvement District is figuring out how to preserve the Green Flow. Many of the pictographs have faded and deteriorated over the last 25 years.
"Normally, we replace our sidewalks every 15 to 20 years," Sander explains. "But you can’t just replace a piece of art."
Sander hopes to find a solution that will preserve the project as long as possible so pedestrians on Brady Street can continue to find meaning in them.
Bubbler Talk listener Paul Krajniak says the project is even richer than he first thought.
"Like any great work of art, it is not just what’s on the surface," Krajniak says. "It’s a combination of the artist’s intent, what you see and what it reveals to you. If you pass it ten times over a year and every time you look at it, it means something different, that’s really a powerful work."
So, the next time you take a walk on Brady Street, remember there’s as much to see on the sidewalks as there is on the street.
Writer's Note: Pamela Scesniak's book Concrete Visions documents all of the Green Flow's pictographs as well as what they mean. Copies of the book are available through the Brady Street Improvement District.
Support for the Eric Von Broadcast Fellowship is provided, in part, by Bader Philanthropies.
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