3:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m. eernl all here on american history tv on c-span3. join us as historians preview the series on saturday june 2nd at 10:00 eastern. on gottlieb frederick pabst was born in 1836 in germany. seeking a better life, his family moved to the united states in 1848, eventually ending up in milwaukee. frederick pabst worked up from cabin boy to steam ship cam taken on the great lakes. in 1862 he married maria best, daughter of german brewer philip best. soon after captain pabst purchased half of the small best brewing company, and by the

1890s the renamed pabst brewing company was the largest larger brewery in the country. next a visit to the mansion of captain frederick pabst. this is part two of a two-part program. >> the exterior of the mansion has been restored by several restoration campaigns that sought it to bring back more of the original dei will that had been lost over the decades. the large spires on top of the house were re-created based on original photographs after the original ones were destroyed by lightning early in the 230th century, when this house was one of the highest points in the neighborhood. just recently we returned awnings back to the front elevation of the house, something na hasn't been seen on the pabst mansion for over 100 summers. so we're excited this brings back a level of authenticity not only to the exterior to the

house but actually shades the interior, keeps us cool and protects our objects within the mansion. when they designed the exterior of the pabst mansion, they were creating something that would become almost iconic in milwaukee. the use of the flemish renaissance revival style with the step gables and spires was something that hadn't been seen in the milwaukee, but once captain pabst used it in 1890 it was applied to the milwaukee city hall in the mid-1890s and into the latter part of the 20th century when our frontier airlines convention center was built, used a modified expression of that architectural style. while the pabst mansion is 20,000 square feet, the pabst family used about 8,000 square feet. the rest, 12,000 square feet was

used by the servants and that was servants area around the house. when i'm asked by people over the years why these houses didn't survive, i think that's one of the key reasons. they were never built it to be used as single-family homes without a huge staff. the pabst family had about 12 to 15 servants indoor and outdoor, day help and live-in. so it was a very large and kind of sophisticated staff. the family had their butler and their maids and their cook had actually stayed with them for a tremendous amount of time, almost the entire time they were in this house. so there was this interesting congeniality between the pabsts and their staff, and it's reflected by kind of the ornateness of the servants' quarters of the house. i've been in quite a few house

hugh zee museums and stately home, and i've always been struck that how charming the pabst mansion's servants quarters are. this is the servants dining room, and this room and i have had a very personal connection because in my mid-20s i volunteered to strip all of the white paint in this room. every wood surface in here had about five layers of white paint. what i thought was going to be a three-week project actually turned out to be a 14-month project. i'm surprised i wasn't actually kicked off the property during that entire restoration. the restoration project actually restored a sense of balance to the mansion that they thought so much of their staff that they would actually create such a magnificent space for them to work in. this particular room, being their dining room, they would have spent a fair amount of time

in. all of the tile is original and hand painted, and each scene, while it seems to be the same tile repeated over and over again, the cloud or the ship or the castle are in different positions. so it really is truly individually hand painted. when we were doing the restoration to this room, we realized, you know, that there had been a stencil pattern up on the wall, and so that was a re-created based upon the original photographs. after it was on the wall, we realized that it was also mimicking the three tulips in the tile work as well. so we started to think about that. so much time and effort had gone into the decoration of this room. it was pretty extraordinary. captain pabst loved little turns

or phrases, so as a way to motivate his staff and it's worked for me all these years as well, he had these stained glass windows created for the servants quarters. you are not, only three of these windows survive, and i'd love to know what the other seven windows said. the one on the left, which i had too look at for 14 months while working on the restoration of this room, drove me a little crazy. it states a good attitude is half the work. that's true. the one on the right was originally placed near the rear entrance to the house, and that states that as the servants were going on out to deal with the daily vendors for meats and produce, that one states buy with your eyes open. they're very practical, but they're worthwhile to remember as well. this is the butler's pantry, and this is our butler's sink with

its traditional tin basin, which all of the crystal and the china and the silver would have been done at this sink. the metal sink would have absorbed a plate or glass dropped in it far more than the soapstone sink in the aadjodjoi room. allot of these items, this wonderful service, have been donated to us. quite a number of these items are family items now, which we're excited to filling our butler's pantry with original material from the family. behind this door was the house safe, so all of the silverware and important papers of the household would have been kept behind this door.

and this was one of 18 points around the house that actual had a battery-powered burglar alarm hooked up to it originally. so that was another one of the things the pabsts incorporated into the house that was kind of this btechnology. for those things less valuable and edible, we had the tin-lined pastry case right here, which breads and cakes and that sort of thing would have been kept relatively fresh with the tin lining. we're very fortunate that this hou house, a victim of constant modernization over the 20th century, and in that sense it's probably fortunate that the pabst family had left the house in 1906. we know that they kept updating things during their ownership. one of the things that has remained, which is

extraordinary, is our three-compartment icebox system, which the archdiocese very smartly had mechanical refrigeration added to it in the 1930s and '40s. so they didn't bother tearing out all of these things. they actually updated them and incorporated them into the household. now, this was a very happy find. i had actually spilled paint removering on this particular panel, which had been painted probably ten times. there was a tremendous amount of paint on it. slowly this green color started revealing itself, and we started shaping away. we found this wonderful, absolutely pristine enamelled porcelain panel that was original to the sink and had not been visible in decades. this is the original kitchen

sink with this huge soapstone basin that's all original. it's just one huge block of soapstone. the original working kitchen was eliminated in 1980 because it had been updated so many times, and so a modern elevator was put into this space that originally had the kitchen in. it was actually a very small room. it was much like a galley kitchen that had a 12-burner hotel stove and a couple of small pantries, and so that space was eliminated. but i've -- it always made me laugh that there are actually three sets of doors from the kitchen into the house, and there were two reasons for that. the most obvious is that they did not want heat from the kitchen to go into the more formal rooms of the house, but also cooking smells. the victorians were obsessed

with not allowing cooking smells to emanate into the room. and the pabst daughter that built a large house in germany, we have her letters to her architect requesting a very tall chimney to vent the cooking smells out of her kitchen and her house. it's interesting how now we think of it as being homey and what makes a home are the cooking smells, and obviously during this period it was considered extremely vulgar. now we leave the servants quarters of the house, and before we do we pass by captain's pabst's elevator put into him. he was a sufferer of emphysema, so this was put in during his last month of life. unfortunately, it was completed just three weeks after he had passed away. this is a single-passenger elevator. it's probably one of the oldest

ones still in a home in milwaukee. we pass back into the formal portion of the house, and then we'll go over to captain pabst's study, which was kind of his quiet retreat. it was kind of an intimate nook. so now we are ensconced in what is really kind of this very dramatic room that is kind of recalling his earlier life in germany, although he grew up very modestly on a farm. this probably in some represents kind of an ideal in his mind of what someone of his position's home should look like. all the woodwork in here is walnut and oak designed in a 17th century german renaissance

design antiqued to give it the appearance that was 200 years old 100 years ago but was indeed made here in milwaukee. what's particularly beautiful about this room and again harkens to the craftsmen working in the dining room, certain artists including milwaukee artist louis meyer actually created this magnificent ceiling all done using different-colored stains to give the effect of lay and then incorporates captain pabst's favorite german phrases into the design as well. so in the small box you have the one word learn over the fireplace and then a feeling heart suffers pain. honor never have i found anything more priceless than a quite and true heart and wait.

never soft, never loud what a friend has told you in confidence. these were little perarls of wisdom that captain pabst enjoyed. he had an excellent sense of humor. for he incorporated a couple other phrases. a good gal of wine and good song will keep body and soul young for all time. at the end of the invitation it said, got a hangover? then drown it. while he could be very lofty in his ideals and aspirations, he also had a great sense of humor. this compartment over here was actually captain pabst's cigar humidor, which was extraordinary. he was a big smoker of fine cigars, and according to his cashbooks he spent between $16 and $21 a month on cigars alone,

which was almost what he paid one of his staff members. behind these compartments we have secret areas for books and documents, which is kind of fun that these spaces exist behind the paneling. the painting over the fireplace is actually very interesting, and it's the original painting that captain pabst selected to have over his fireplace in this room. it's entitled "plowed in saxony." he had grown up almost exactly where captain pabst had grown up. this painting remitting the land escape of where captain pabst was born, this very flatland in germany. so in many ways this painting pulls this room together, because it exhibits where captain pabst began and where he ended up. so you have this wonderful combination of details, of his

german heritage and also elements of the fortune that he made in america of which he was very proud to be a citizen as well. so all of these things put together kind of made up the complex character of captain pabst. we're at the base of the grand staircase, and in the southern united states you would have a pineapple as a symbol of hospitality at the foot of your grand scataircase. we have a hops bud here, and we have it here. there it is. we have the hop's bud going up on all of our posts going up the grand staircase, and again this is a wonderful space that is open and bright and crowned by

stained glass skylight. this is all carved oak, and f again i think this was such an extraordinary point to remind people na all of this was put foeg in the course of two years, and it's extraordinary to think of all of the craftsman that worked on this house to accomplish all of that in such a short period of time. i always think looking at this magnificent stair hall how could they have built this house in just two years? in fact, captain pabst was frustrated it took so long. it's hard to think of the fact it could have taken less time to build this house than just two years. this little spot right here is called the trumpet tower. while it's more or less an architectural device to break up the stair hall, this spot was used by the pabst family to keep a large chinese vase.

in 1895 one of the grandsons was playing on the staircase right above us, and he decided to dive head forward into the chinese vase on the trumpet tower. he ended up exploding the vase, and pieces of it shattered and flew everywhere. he broke both of his wrists but this little spot actually saved his life. as you can imagine, these were the private quarters for the pabst family. just into this room this was the regency room, and this was the bedroom of their youngest daughter emma and our most recent restoration effort. called the regency room because of the swag and tassel design on the fireplace mantle, that element is carried out in the silk wall coverings replicated

for us for this room and also the lincrested details on the cove and in the ceiling. this room which had been painted completely white in the 1960s was completely refurbished and completed just a little more than a year ago. by doing intricate color analysis of the ceiling, using a dental instrument, our historic color analysts from chicago came up, revealed certain key elements of the ceiling and then mapped out the entire original pattern. once we had the original palette for the room, we were able to trans pose those colors into the room because of all our photographs of the room in 1827 were all black and white. using that we were able to apply color to the silk wall coverings and also in our efforts to

re-create the draperies and the bed coverlet as well. the rug was hand-knotted for us, and again, brings out all of those decorative details, and the color is very harmonious and pulling together the entire suite of rooms. this is one of my favorite rooms in the house. there is just something about the design and the symmetry i really enjoy. now when you look at the black-and-white photographs and compare the room it's almost completely spot-on. so you feel a particular joy when you realize that the restoration of the room was so completely successful. it really hardens you to know that the room will stay like this now and will hopefully

never have to be completely restored again. among the modern conveniences that were included in the pabst mansion were in suite bathrooms, and there were ten of them in the house. that's really remarkable, and i think about the first generation of contractors that had to deal with electrical lighting and plumbing all of these bathrooms and forced air heating systems. it's pretty extraordinary. in the regency room bathroom we have the original bathroom tile and we have the one original remaining tub in the house. the only reason why this tub survived is it was being used as a slop sink in the basement, and to we've reconditioned and restored and brought up and will be -- when we're done with the restoration of the bathroom it will be all put together again. and definitely in a better place than it had been.

a number of years ago we had water damage occur in part of the house, which actually was fortuitous because it forced us to take off some of the woodwork in one of the back halls, reveals a little section of stencil work that had been in the servants quarters. we started to look for stencils in less formal portions of the house including bathroom. so we were very excited to find the original detail of stencilworstenci stencilwostencil work in this bathroom. it was revealed so cleanly, we decided to leave it and carry out the re-creation of the stencil work from that point. and i think that's really important when people come to see a place like the pabst mansion, that these are original details that we're putting back. these aren't just things we pick out of catalogs or pattern books.

so going out into the second floor hall, this was more or less a drawing room for the family in front of a fireplace and in front of what were then comfortable pieces of furniture in this hall. the painting that is kind of the showstopper of this particular face was recently reacquired by us and it's entitled "farewell to the homeland." the pabsts would have purchased this in the 1880s. it was painted in 1856 in the decade around when captain and mrs. pabst both emigrated from america to germ aaen. this painting in particular would have had such great resonance with both captain and mrs. pabst in that they would have experienced all the emotion of leaving one's homeland for the unknown. so that's what this painting is

conveying, all this great sadness. however, on the left side of the painting underneath the old varnish, you also have two or three gentlemen having a drink and looking forward. so this conveying both sides of the emigration story. the sadness of leaving one's homeland but also looking forward to new opportunities. this is the master suite, and in this particular room is the master sitting room. this would have been mrs. pabst's kind of inner sanctum where she had her sewing table and desked ed tto do her correspondence. you're actually seeing something that was like a middle class victorian house dropped into the middle of a very fine guilded age mansion. rather than the silk wall coverings that their children enjoyed in the other rooms throughout the house, mrs. pabst

selected victorian floral wallpapers. they had mismatched furniture from the old house, they had rocking chairs in front of the fireplace. it was much more of a home-spun room than any other space in the mansion. this is currently our most recent restoration project, and we are seeking to recapture that essence of that homeyness that mrs. pabst wanted for her own private quarters. the on the ceiling you can see how all of this ornament had been painted white in the 1960s, but beneath the surface of white paint we're finding the original colors, and if you look into this laurel wreath on the ceiling, you see fragments of the original pond franz painted onto the ceiling surface. these are all the details that are going to be brought back, as well as re-created victorian wallpapers and the victorian

drapes that would have been into this space. so by the end of this project it will create this very interesting balance between the heavy guilded age rooms throughout the rest of the mansion with this kind of very personal space that the pabsts wanted to create for themselves. this beer pav yoilion and this a great story of captain pabst and reaching the zenith of his career. the pabst brewing company decided to exhibit pabst products at the world's fair in chicago in 1893. he had this amazing pavilion built out of terra-cotta and stained class to display a 13-square foot model of all the

pabsts buildings in milwaukee created and unbur niched all in 24 karat gold. it was an elaborate display. pabst was submitted into the contest fob chosen as america's finest beer, which it was. on every can and bottle of pabst blue ribbon today still has the note that this was chosen as america's finest beer in 1893. so with captain pabst with the gold medal in his hand and that's a little secret that there actually never was a blue ribbon. that was a marketing gimmick that captain pabst came up with in the 1880s. with the gold medal in his hand, captain pabst had the entire structure dismantled, crated up and brought up to milwaukee and added onto the side of his mansion. so here we are in the pavilion,

and so this was -- this was captain pabst's display at the world's fair in chicago in 1893. after the fair was over, he had this entire terra-cotta structure dismantled and brought up to milwaukee, created into his own private summer conservatory but then converted by the archdiocese into a chapel. one of the issues that we're going to have to deal with is that the entire structure is made out of terra cot at that. within the terra-cotta is a 19th century corroding iron structure, which unfortunately is breaking the pavilion apart from the inside out. to restore the building we have to take the entire structure down to the foundation, remove that faulty structural support, and then rebuild it using original terra-cotta blocks and then also re-creating the broken terra-cotta blocks in new

terra-cotta in buffalo, new york. by the end of the entire restoration process, the pavilion will be restored back to what captain pabst enjoyed in the 19th century. that small building that has been converted into a chapel and now is our gift shop we're looking to re-create as the pabst garden which is a tasting room for pabst products at the end of the tour. so kind of bringing together captain pabst's business interests but also re-creating it as the conservatory that captain pabst wanted at the mansion for a budget of about $6 million. we will have this amazing, amazing re-created space at the pabst mansion. the pavilion itself has actually more national significance than perhaps the mansion does itself because it's 1 of 4 buildings