Dylan Brogan
Remaking the statue of Colonel Hans Christian Heg: a wax head sits in the State Archive Preservation Facility.
Joe Kapler, a lead curator with the Wisconsin State Historical Society, pushes a small button and large metal shelves move apart to create an aisle. He gestures to a bronze spittoon ornately decorated with the letter “W.”
“That would be a cuspidor from the current state Capitol,” says Kapler. “That building was designed and built through the early 1900s when smokeless tobacco was common. So there were dozens and dozens and dozens of these throughout the Capitol.”
Just a foot or so away, on another shelf, Kapler carefully opens a simple cardboard box that contains a twisted heap of metal.
“This is the header from the engine of the Econoline van that held the bomb that blew up Sterling Hall…. This is what remained of the engine block,” Kapler says. “It speaks to the literal power of that event. It’s one of those pieces that makes history feel unfiltered. It’s right here in front of you.”
These are just two of tens of thousands of historical artifacts housed in the State Archive Preservation Facility located along the Yahara River on Madison’s near east side. Plans for the $47 million state-of-the-art building were discussed over the tenure of four governors before it made it into the 2013-2014 biennial state budget. It opened in late 2017 and is considered the finest state archival facility in the country. The building is a four-story, temperature-controlled safe that houses thousands of state records, memorabilia and historic objects from the state Department of Veterans Affairs and the Wisconsin Historical Society.
Though the building is normally closed to the public, Isthmus was able to see a sample of what lies inside on a recent tour. Kevin Hampton, curator of history for the Department of Veterans Affairs, points out a 15th-century Spanish cannon found in the Philippines and brought back by members of the Wisconsin National Guard. There are samurai swords brought back by Wisconsin soldiers who fought in the Pacific during World War II and Nazi daggers taken home as souvenirs by men who fought on the Western Front. A whip used to torture slaves from Jefferson Davis’ Mississippi plantation was taken by soldiers from the Wisconsin 14th cavalry. The archives house every kind of uniform, hat and boot worn by Wisconsin soldiers from the Civil War to the war in Afghanistan.
Hampton regards with reverence each of these items.
“Every one of these objects has a story. That’s what we are really interested in: giving life to the men and women of Wisconsin,” says Hampton. “This amazing facility is a testament to the commitment the people of Wisconsin have shown towards preserving our past so we can learn from it for a better future.”
In a large room on the second floor, Mike Bath quietly works alone on various preservation projects related to the Wisconsin state Capitol. Bath is an engineer for the state’s Bureau of Building Management. A wax cast of Colonel Hans Christian Heg sits nearby. The bronze statue of Heg was torn from its perch on the Capitol grounds last summer by Black Lives Matter protesters, dragged through downtown streets and dumped in Lake Monona. One of the statue’s legs was snapped off and its head was never recovered. A new Heg bronze statue, being cast in Detroit, is nearly ready to be shipped to Wisconsin.
“Last summer, I got a call at four in the morning and they brought Heg’s body here after it was fetched out of the lake. So he was here for a while,” says Bath. “There is a duplicate statue of Heg in Racine County. We had to go there to make a cast of his head. So that’s why that wax copy of Heg is looking at us over there.”
Others items stored in the State Archive Preservation Facility:
• The Packers jersey Brett Favre wore while defeating the Bears 31-14 in 2005.
• An iron lung that once breathed for
a polio patient.
• Butch Vig’s original drum set that he used while playing in the Wisconsin bands Spooner, Fire Town, and Garbage.
• An X-ray machine — manufactured in Milwaukee in the 1940s — that was used in a Sturgeon Bay shoe store so customers could see how their foot bones fit inside a pair of boots.
• A shawl once worn by President Abraham Lincoln which was gifted by Mary Todd Lincoln, after his assassination, to a Black Canadian surgeon in the 1860s. That surgeon’s grandson lived in Milwaukee and donated it to the historical society.
• A 1969 Oscar Mayer Wienermobile dubbed “Old Number 7.”
