Distinguished Milwaukee architects Von Grossmann, Burroughs and Van Lanen designed the city’s innovative former Forest Home Library in 1966. The library itself received praise and awards upon completion, including an Honor Award from the Wisconsin chapter of the AIA and a Design Excellence Award from the American Institute of Steel Construction, both in 1967. Judges from the AIA wrote that Forest Home Library was “an alive and creative solution to small scale public architecture.” The library is an excellent and intact example of mid-century design principles and the most significant library of its time period in the region. As an early architectural application of exposed Corten (or weathering) steel structural framing (likely the first in the region), Forest Home Library aesthetically nods to Eero Saarinen’s celebrated John Deere Headquarters in Moline, IL.