Every morning I drive past the Milwaukee County Courthouse. A beautiful structure listed on the National Register of Historic Places, its rightful prominence in the cityscape has been shadowed for decades by poor planning (my opinion), by decisions made for convenience of unrelated matters (again, poor planning), and finally, by the sorry state of our world today (yet again poor planning?). Don’t get me started, but freeway construction, gun violence, a poorly positioned and inadequately engineered parking structure, just to mention a few things.

But anyway . . .

Several weeks ago I noticed how striking the “Milwaukee County Courthouse” lettering appears in early morning sunlight. Maybe it’s something about the angle of the sun hitting the carved edges of the text at that specific time of day at this specific time of year; I don’t know. I’ve driven past the courthouse for decades, but not until this fall, when I’ve approached it from the south every morning on my way to work in the morning (a new route for me), did that lettering capture my attention and imagination.

I’ve yearned to take a photo of this for weeks, but conditions have never been right. Either the sky is overcast, or the light is green and I can’t pause, or there’s a huge line of vehicles behind me wanting to turn right on red (which you can do in Wisconsin), meaning I also can’t pause for long without drawing the ire of people in a hurry to get to work.

But today, at last: Sunny morning! Red light at the intersection! Nobody waiting impatiently behind me! Victory!

And here is the result 🙂