Kenosha Eagles Club Demolition Prompts Local Reflection On Waukesha's Comparative Luck

WAUKESHA — Margaret Wells heard about the Kenosha Eagles Club's demolition on a Tuesday, from a segment on the ten o'clock news she watches mostly for the weather, and by Thursday she had drafted and mailed a two-page letter to three members of the Common Council explaining what the building's fate meant for Waukesha. "That was a building with history," Wells, 68, wrote in the letter, a copy of which she also provided to this newspaper and, according to her son, at least one Nextdoor group she no longer has posting privileges on. "We're fortunate Waukesha still has places like the Civic Theatre and our old downtown boutiques, even if half their windows say 'Closing Sale.'"

Wells, who lives on Hartwell Avenue and has served on no formal preservation board, commission, or task force, said she felt compelled to write after watching footage of a wrecking crew staging equipment outside the Kenosha lodge. She described the segment as "the kind of thing you can't unsee," though she acknowledged under questioning from this reporter that she had watched it only once, for roughly ninety seconds, before switching to a rerun.

One Visit, Three Decades Ago

Pressed on her personal history with the Kenosha building, Wells said she had visited the Eagles Club exactly once, in the summer of 1994, for a cousin's wedding reception, and had not been back since. She could not recall the color of the ballroom carpet, whether the building had a second floor, or the cousin's spouse's first name. She had never photographed the building's exterior, requested its blueprints, or written to any preservation society about it before this week. "I don't need to have measured the woodwork to know it mattered," Wells said. "Some things you just know mattered."

"We're fortunate Waukesha still has places like the Civic Theatre and our old downtown boutiques, even if half their windows say 'Closing Sale.'"

— Margaret Wells, Waukesha resident

The Waukesha Civic Theatre, cited twice in Wells's letter as evidence of the city's relative good fortune, marked its 70th season this fall and remains, by all accounts, structurally intact and un-threatened by any wrecking crew. The downtown boutiques Wells referenced, a stretch of storefronts along West Main Street that has carried hand-lettered "Closing Sale" signs in at least four of its windows for a period residents estimate at somewhere between fourteen months and "basically forever," were likewise unthreatened, if not exactly thriving.

"A Cautionary Tale," Unspecified Further

Wells's letter concluded that the Kenosha club's demolition was "a cautionary tale for our own community," though she declined, when asked, to name a specific Waukesha building she believes is at comparable risk. She said the Civic Theatre "seems fine for now" and that she had "no particular information" suggesting otherwise, but added that the point of the letter was less about any one structure than about "a feeling you get."

Common Council aide Terri Osborne confirmed the letter had been received by all three addressed members and logged into the correspondence file, where it joins, Osborne said, "a decent number" of letters each month that cite out-of-county news coverage as the basis for local concern. Osborne said no formal response was planned, though one council member's office had sent a form reply thanking Wells for her engagement.

Wells said she intends to keep writing letters "as things come up" and has already begun a folder, labeled in blue marker on a manila envelope, for what she is calling "Waukesha Preservation, Ongoing." As of Thursday, the folder contained one letter, one newspaper clipping about the Kenosha demolition, and a sticky note reading "Civic Theatre, check on."