A month before his assassination in 1865, President Abraham Lincoln signed legislation to create a national system of homes for disabled veterans. The Milwaukee VA Soldiers Home opened in 1867 as one of the three original homes for wounded veterans in the nation.
The sprawling 90-acre campus on the far west side of Milwaukee has several historic buildings dating back to the 19th century and was designed to be a self-contained village.
As those buildings fell into disrepair, the campus was considered one of the 11 most endangered historic properties in the country in 2011, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Today, some of the buildings have been restored to serve their original purpose: the service of veterans. That is the result of redevelopments led by The Alexander Co., a Madison-based development firm specializing in historic preservation and urban revitalization. In 2021, the company completed a rehabilitation of six historic buildings on the campus, including the iconic Old Main building.
Now, the firm is tackling rehabilitation of three more buildings on the campus, with a $25 million plan.
Planning and design work is underway to restore the Governor’s Residence, built in 1868 and in service up until recently; the Ward Memorial Theater, built in 1881 and empty for about 40 years; and the Soldiers Home Chapel, built in 1889 and empty for about 30 years.
Under the current proposal, the Ward Memorial Theater building will host community theater and musical groups and offer a destination venue for conferences and lectures for VA Medical Center staff. The Soldiers Home Chapel will become a nondenominational worship space and conference space for training and mental health sessions. The Governor’s Residence will hold offices for supportive services providers and a technological training center to provide computer literacy training.
The Alexander Co. is planning to start construction in April of 2025 to complete all three buildings by late 2026.
That phase of the project will build off the $40 million project of Old Main and five other buildings, which created 101 supportive-housing units for veterans and their families who are homeless or at risk of homelessness. Even before work wrapped up on that project in 2021, there was a waitlist for units, according to Jonathan Beck, development project manager at The Alexander Co.
“And there continues to be a waitlist of veterans wishing to live there,” Beck said. “I remember the first public hearing when the VA announced the first phase at Old Main, a lot of folks showed up and there were questions about what if one day there aren’t any veterans that need this space. The VA said, ‘Unfortunately, that day is never going to come.’”
The Alexander Co. is partnering with the VA on the project. The VA said the second phase will help extend the continuum of care for veterans living on the campus and in the greater Milwaukee area.
“It’s almost difficult to put it into words what this means to us,” said Kendra Bishop, director of business development at The Alexander Co. “The very nature of our work is preserving history and making sure these buildings are returned to the communities they’re originally built for.”
This work is funded by complicated, and fortuitous, financing packages. Both phases of the Milwaukee VA Soldiers Home redevelopment rely on state and federal historic tax credit programs that came into effect in the early 2010s. For the first phase, developers were able to seize on a 2017 tax reform to create a unique structure of federal low-income housing tax credits. The second phase will also use a significant amount of funding from the PACT Act, which passed in 2022 and provided an influx of funding to the VA.
“Through all these various state and federal programs, we’ve seemed to be in the right place at the right time,” Beck said.
In 2011, the campus became one of 42 national historic landmarks in Wisconsin. Before it secured that protection, ideas had been floated to replace some of the historic buildings, resulting in protests and a multi-year effort led by the Milwaukee Preservation Alliance to save the buildings.
“We know what these buildings mean to the veteran community, and they’ve been waiting for decades to see them come back to life,” Beck said.
