These records were acquired from the Southeast Wisconsin Professional Baseball Park District, the majority owner of Miller Park, in 2006. The series includes some records from Milwaukee County, the owners of the preceding baseball park, Milwaukee County Stadium. The majority of the records document Miller Park.
The records document Milwaukee County Stadium planning, construction, and maintenance, circa 1924-1996, and Miller Park planning and construction, circa 1986-2001. Therefore the collection consists of two series: MILWAUKEE COUNTY STADIUM and MILLER PARK. This is an imperfect division however, since some documents pertain to both structures. For example, feasibility studies evaluated the renovation of the County and Stadium and the construction of a new stadium. Similarly, Miller Park Progress reports document the construction of Miller Park with the simultaneous demolition of County Stadium. If documents pertained to both facilities they were filed with the most recent structure: Miller Park.
The records are not complete. Construction process of the original Milwaukee County Stadium is not well-documented. While there are reports on sites initially considered, there is no documentation supporting the final selection of the Story Quarry site. There are many plat maps and much surveying documentation, but few architectural drawings of the original stadium construction process. There is no documentation on the unsuccessful bids for either facility or the funding strategy process for Miller Park. The series does illustrate the sometimes complex land issues involved in providing a municipal facility.
The MILWAUKEE COUNTY STADIUM series includes documentation related to the site selection, land acquisition and easements, and site surveying for the original Stadium. The series is in roughly chronological order, beginning in 1924. Documents and correspondence also cover property access and parking, water and sewer system upgrades, improvements to the property, and routine maintenance of the Stadium, including a small selection of periodic inspection reports. The bulk of the correspondence is between three groups: the Milwaukee County Department of Public Works, the Veterans Administration, and contractors.
The contracts under Soldiers Home include the stipulation that approximately 500 reservations will be held for staff and patients of the VA until 24 hours before an event. This may have led to the apocryphal belief that the stadium was constructed so that events would be viewable from the Hospital. From 1953 to 1973, before the park was expanded, hospital patients did sit outside their rooms on Mockingbird Hill overlooking right field and were able to watch the games for free.
There is a small selection of meeting minutes from the Milwaukee County Stadium Study Planning Committee covering the time frame December 20, 1988 to March 20, 1989.
The selection of blueprints/drawings focuses on land acquisition and the structural aspects of the stadium, not the mechanicals. See the attached appendix for a list of the blueprints and other architectural drawings.
The MILLER PARK series documents the planning and construction of the Park through plans and studies, printed progress reports, slides, architectural and structural drawings in electronic form, and both construction progress and promotional videos. There is a small selection of color artist renderings of the proposed new stadium including a mock-up of the Miller Park logo and reduced prints of larger presentation drawings.
The architectural and structural drawings in electronic form on the DVD labeled “Milwaukee_Series_53” are in their original file structure. The DVD contains 323 files, in 30 folders, for a total of 1.96 GB. Most of the items are compressed, as they were when received by the Society. The files are primarily in AutoCAD with some in .pdf format. There are three folders of electronic drawings on the DVD: “Architectural Record Drawings,” “Structural Drawings,” and “Civil Record Documents.” These three DVD items comprise a portion of the original bid package from HKS for construction of Miller Park.
The “Architectural Record Drawings” folder (DVD Item 1) is the Miller Park construction project manual and provides the details and specification for the park. It was compiled by the firm of HKS, Inc., architects/engineers/planners, of Dallas, Texas. The folder contains two compressed files; recordwgs.zip and plt.zip. Items in recordwgs.zip are AutoCAD drawings. These files can be minimally viewed in Adobe Illustrator. Items in plt.zip are in Hewlett-Packard Graphics language; these items can be viewed in Graphics Converter, at low resolution.
HKS also produced the files in DVD Item 2 entitled “Structural Drawings.” This folder contains two .zip compressed files; 100903_mp_pdf. zip, and 100903_mp_plts.zip. Unzipped files in 100903_mp_pdf. zip are numbered using the structure sxxx.pdf, with the 's' number being the title of the drawing. The first file, s001 .pdf is the sheet index for the Miller Park project. The .pdf files should be viewable on any computer after being decompressed. The same material is contained in 100903_mp_plts.zip, in a different file format.
DVD Item 3 contains the folder “Civil Record Documents,” also produced by HKS, consisting of AutoCAD drawings. There is no index to these drawings.
Progress Reports contains monthly construction progress reports from Executive Director Mike Duckett to the SEWPBPD covering the time period 1997 to 2001, and a final report dated September 2001. Each volume contains nine sections: Project Overview, Stadium Progress Report, Infrastructure Progress Report, Design Development, Construction Committee, Project Participation Committee, Finance Committee, SEWPBPD Board, and Other. The reports contain detailed budget statements and financial reports, construction timelines, photographic reproductions and cover all phases of construction. The Progress Report for July 1999 contains information and photographs of the July 14, 1999 crane collapse and roof collapse that claimed the lives of three ironworkers. A visual representation of construction progress is contained in slides (in four slide albums) created by photographer Jeff J. Voelz.
There are two items under Videos. The time lapse video of construction, including the crane collapse and clean-up, was produced by WTMJ-TV Graphics. It is DVD Item 4. DVD Item 5, “Together We Can: Building Miller Park,” was produced by the SEWPBPD and shows clips of agencies and committees involved in the Miller Park project. It appears to be a promotional tool highlighting the benefits and economic impact of the completed Park.
