Adaptive Reuse

Hillcrest Park (built in 1956) was one of eight Milwaukee-area Nike missile bases. It was built to deter and protect Milwaukee’s large manufacturing infrastructure against a Soviet bomber attack that, thankfully, never came. However, most of the Nike missile sites around the country had been shut down, and in 1972, the base was granted to the City of Waukesha. The Waukesha Parks, Recreation, and Forestry departments targeted the largest of the remaining support structures for the radar antennas to be converted into a new open-air park pavilion. The careful selection of new materials and respect for the existing structure results in a second act for a once deteriorating, eerie Cold War relic as a park pavilion and an educational piece for future generations.

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