Page 53 - All Scale Rails Magazine Issue 19 March april 2018

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A Little History

What do you get when you cover a con-
crete frame with hand cut panes of glass
held together by a dome shaped spider web
of aluminum? You get the one of kind
Mitchell Park Horticultural Conservatory!
Located in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and
fondly called “The Domes” by local resi-
dents, The Domes are three beehive shaped
domes that help to preserve the plants locat-
ed within them. The original conservatory,
a plain greenhouse, was built in 1898, but
with age became unsafe and had to be torn
down in 1955. A local architect, Donald The Domes have three different themes:
Grieb, won a design competition for what is Arid, Tropical, and Show. The Arid dome
now the new conservatory. Each dome is houses one the world’s best collections of
140 feet in diameter, 85 feet high, and cacti, succulents, arid bulbs, and shrubs. The
weighs 337 ½ tons—or about the weight of dome is divided into areas of the world such
225 medium sized cars! as Madagascar, Africa, the Canary Islands,
All three domes together have 9,438 South America, and North America. You
panes of glass. The new conservatory took will find familiar plants, such as the Crown
four years to build and was finished in 1967. of Thorns (Euphorbia milii), and shrubs (Al-
To this day, it remains the only conservatory luaudia and Pachypodium), that shed their
of its kind in the world. leaves during a drought.

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