Walls

Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life.

– Oscar Wilde

Today, the Tunnel Level below Froedtert Hospital connects several buildings on campus. At one time, though, it was a poorly-lit cinderblock and poured concrete space where employees and staff walked back-and-forth between Froedtert and the old County Hospital. During my residency in the 1980s, I spent a lot of time in the tunnel because the ENT clinic and the Emergency Department were in the County Hospital but our hospitalized patients and ORs were at Froedtert. I was always in the wrong building when my pager erupted.

When it first opened, walking the tunnel felt like running a gauntlet. Cavernous, forbidding chain-link storage cages and roaring compressors lined the walls. It was long and leaky. I recall listening to the echoes and stepping over puddles.

Over the years, the tunnel was narrowed, waterproofed, and brightened. Construction created office space, completed the Specialty Clinics Building overhead, and added Children’s Hospital next door. Extensions were built to the other buildings and the corridor was opened to the public. Decorative trim, directional signs, and artwork appeared on the walls. Hundreds of people navigate the hallway each day. The new, brighter corridor is still long, but it does not feel like a “tunnel” any more.

The space looks nothing like it once did. Hospitals, including Froedtert, invest thought, money, and effort brightening walls and creating interesting, healing environments. Former New York City mayor and billionaire Michael Bloomberg recognized this with a $120 million gift that funded over 500 original works of art by 70 artists for the new Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. His largesse, safe to say, is an exception. Hospitals enlist professionals to develop color palates and themes; public spaces tend to be lined with generic, gently-tinted landscapes, geometric designs, and nature photographs. Despite the creative talent behind each piece, few prints are labeled or signed. Rarely, does hallway artwork command our attention or have any obvious local connection.

Exceptions are worth noting. The Froedtert & Medical College Cancer Center, which has a thematic emphasis on cranes, features a lobby sculpture by artist Richard Vanheuvelen and a front entrance installation. On the third floor of the Center, a changing gallery features artwork by cancer patients. Near the Skywalk Deli, a collection of original architectural elements preserved at the time of the County Hospital demolition is displayed. Visitors stop to rub the old bannister and examine the stonework.

Not long ago, while walking through the west end of Tunnel Level, I stopped to spend a few minutes with a collection of silkscreen prints that were, at one time, prominently displayed upstairs in the main corridors of the hospital. These idealized Milwaukee images no longer match the hospital’s color scheme but they work just fine in the lower level. The prints carry handwritten titles including “Lakefront Festival of the Arts,” “Performing Arts Center,” “Summerfest,” and “Suburban Block Party.” A man with a baseball cap works a grill. The pre-Calatrava Milwaukee Art Museum hosts the arts festival. People race bicycles, fish near a bluff, or relax. Each print is signed, numbered, and dated “1980,” the year the hospital opened.

The prints bring back memories of my days as a resident. While hurrying about, I would sometimes stop to spend a moment with “Suburban Block Party,” trying to discern where it was taken (I never figured it out). I thought of the print, “Summerfest,” when standing on the Festival Grounds looking up at the Skyride. These images reminded me of some of the good things Milwaukee offered. On my rare days off, our young family explored the neighborhoods, beaches, festivals, and parks.

One image is missing from the collection: the series originally included a girl gliding across the ice of the skating rink that once stood in the center of Mayfair Mall. It was a moment of grace captured in time.

Fortunately, someone had the foresight to save these silkscreen prints and then display them. These anything-but-generic images no longer hold a decorative place of prominence. Somehow, though, it is fitting that they have found a home where the old, dank tunnel once stood. The tunnel and the prints are both relics, sharing a bit of the institution’s – and my own – history.