| Additional Information: | 2024 - This roughly 265-acre site, located two miles south of the Sheboygan River in downtown Sheboygan, includes the Edgewater Power Plant and its associated Coal Plant. For the purposes of this report, the Power Plant houses the boilers, turbines, generators, and associated systems (interior coal bunkers, exhaust, cooling, etc.); the Coal Plant (AHI 247064) consists of the coal yards and all coal handling systems necessary to receive coal from suppliers and to move coal into the Power Plant. An electrical substation, consisting primarily of outdoor transformers and other electrical equipment, is also on the site, but its utilitarian nature lacks significance architectural resources and all equipment present appears to be less than 50 years old (per historic aerial photographs).
The Edgewater electricity generating facility currently operates by receiving coal via rail at the Coal Plant. Coal is transferred via conveyors to the top of a crusher house, located south of the Power Plant. At the base of the crusher house is another coal conveyor, which moves coal to the Power Plant building. Within the Power Plant, coal is stored in bunkers. From there, the pulverized coal is fed into the combustion chamber of a boiler. The boiler generates high pressure steam which expands into and through a high-pressure turbine. The steam then returns to the boiler to be re-heated before traveling into and through a low-pressure turbine. The steam is then condensed back into water (via a cooling water loop that takes cooling water from and returns cooling water to Lake Michigan) and then fed back into the boilers to be turned into steam again. The high-pressure and low-pressure turbines share a common drive shaft, which is connected to an electrical generator. Combustion exhaust from the boiler proceeds through scrubbers in the baghouse before going up a 550-foot-tall smokestack. Material that does not burn in the combustion process, called ash, was once disposed of in ponds and landfills, but is now largely sold and re-used in the production of cement.
The parcel upon which the power plant and coal plant sits is bound by Lakeshore Drive (also known as County Road E E) to the west, Lake Michigan to the east, the Sheboygan Sewage/Wastewater Treatment Facility to the north, and coal yards to the south. The project area is located on vegetated parcels on the west side of Lakeshore Drive that had most recently been used as staging and laydown yards for the construction of the baghouse and scrubber system, completed in 2016.
The oldest portion of the Edgewater Power Plant, finished in 1931, is located at the southern end of the current building. Here, the building has an Art Deco style, with the wall having numerous, shallow setbacks and projections with stepped corners. The upper portion of this roughly four-story building is clad in red brick arranged in a common bond pattern. The first story has a concrete exterior. The south side of this portion of the building is relatively unchanged, with a tall service door inset in the western half of the southern elevation and several metal-frame, multi-pane industrial windows in the eastern half (some of which have been removed and the openings sealed with red brick). The tall service door provides direct access to an expansive and relatively open hall that houses the turbine and generator units, arranged more or less in a line, from south to north within the western half of the building. A bridge crane of riveted construction is located above an open area within the building, just inside the tall service door. The eastern half of the building is densely packed with coal bunkers and exceptionally large steam boilers.
As initially constructed in 1931, the power plant building housed a single 30-megawatt steam turbine generator and a boiler. A single tall smokestack was located between the building’s eastern elevation and the Lake Michigan shoreline. A second 30-megawatt unit (a unit refers to the turbine and generator package as well as the boiler) was added in 1941. By the 1980s, both of these early units (commonly referred to as Unit 1 and Unit 2) were retired and removed from the building.
An angled truss structure housing a coal conveyor extends from the base of a metal-clad crusher house, part of the coal-handling plant, located south of the power plant building, to a metal-paneled addition on the top of the brick power plant building. The current coal conveyor structure, as well as the western portion of the crusher house south of the power plant, is part of the circa 1969 Unit 4 additions to the power plant. The eastern portion of the crusher house, located closer to the shoreline, was built in the early 1980s to support Unit 5.
An architecturally sympathetic brick addition, completed in 1951, was constructed on the north side of the original power plant building. The northern addition accommodates a third generating unit (Unit 3), north of and roughly in-line with the first two units. This roughly 69-megawatt third unit remains in place today, but it was operationally retired in 2019. A second 200-foot-tall smokestack, north of the earlier stack, was also constructed as part of the 1951 addition. Neither of these two smokestacks are extant.
The 1951 addition is the same height as the older 1931 building, but it includes a roughly two-story tall portion above the roofline, well set back from the edge of the roof, to accommodate an additional coal conveyor. This additional conveyor extends from the top of the earlier conveyor, above the Unit 1 and Unit 2 coal bunkers, to a point above the newer Unit 3 bunkers. As part of the 1951 addition to accommodate Unit 3, the office portion on the west side of the earlier building was expanded towards the north. A later addition on the western elevation, built in the 1980s, covers nearly all of the 1931 building’s western elevation and expands the office spaces previously present here. This 1980s addition is also executed in red brick with windows recessed slightly from the plane of the wall in an arrangement similar to windows in the earlier 1931 and 1951 portions of the building.
Continuing to the north, a metal-clad addition was constructed to house Unit 4, a 330-megawatt unit, which went online in 1969. This block, like later additions, has an astylistic utilitarian appearance. Two horizontal ribbons extend across the western elevation of the roughly five story lower portion of the addition. The roughly five-story addition includes a roughly three-story block above, more or less centered and in-line with the earlier coal conveyor line. The metal exterior wall panels were pre-painted, asbestos-coated steel. A third smokestack, 360-feet tall, was built at the same time to accommodate unit 4.
Preliminary plans for an addition to house a 380-megawatt Unit 5, along with a new 550-foot smokestack, were announced in 1975. Plans would evolve to ultimately include a pair of 550-foot smokestacks (both extant) to address pollution concerns, with the relatively new Unit 4 stack removed from service (extant, but now greatly shortened and capped). Construction began by 1979 and Unit 5 went online in 1985. This addition extended the roughly five-story Unit 4 block to the north. The Unit 5 addition is approximately one-third longer than the Unit 4 addition along its north-south axis, and the rooftop block appears to be roughly five stories tall (for a total build height of roughly ten stories) rather than the three-story rooftop block in the Unit 4 section. One 550-foot smokestack is just north of this Unit 5 block, the second is located near the site of the earlier three stacks, between the oldest portion of the building and the shoreline. The eastern block of the coal crusher house and its conveyor structure, adjacent to the shoreline, leads directly from the coal plant south of the power plant to this rooftop block. Units 1 and 2 were retired (turbines and generators removed from the Power Plant) when Unit 5 was brought online.
A final block northwest of the northern 550-foot smokestack was completed in 2016. This addition is a baghouse and scrubber system which improves air quality by reducing sulfur dioxide emissions. The baghouse appears to be roughly five stories tall and matches the astylistic utilitarian appearance of the earlier Unit 4 and Unit 5 additions. Some of the air handling structures on the baghouse are unpainted, having a metal finish. Construction of the baghouse coincided with the decommissioning of Unit 3 in 2015 and Unit 4 in 2018.
With each major addition to the power plant, many of the smaller support structures and buildings were either altered or newly constructed. Among those, the electrical substation appears to have undergone both growth and alterations. Historic aerial photographs suggest that none of the extant resources within the electrical substation area are 50 years old or older.
Historic Context -
Sheboygan’s electrical generating industry was first formed in 1888. The first electrical generator was driven from the drive shaft of a water wheel in a local sawmill and had sufficient capacity to operate 1,000 small incandescent lamps. In 1892, Sheboygan’s electrical generating plant had a capacity of 100 kilowatts and rates were high.
Sheboygan’s early electric generating industry was closely tied to the street car system. Electric street cars were first introduced in Sheboygan in 1894 and operated by the Sheboygan City Railway company, with Sheboygan’s electric generating plant then a part of this company. An interurban line connecting Sheboygan with Kohler was added in 1898, followed by lines to Sheboygan Falls in 1899 and Plymouth in 1903. In 1908, the name of the company was changed to the Sheboygan Railroad and Electric company. Ownership of the company changed in 1913 and again in 1916, resulting in the company name changing to the Eastern Wisconsin Electric Railway company. Ownership changed again in 1922, and the name Wisconsin Power and Light Company was adopted. In subsequent years, portions of the street railway were abandoned, culminating with the end of Sheboygan’s street car operation in 1935.
Consumer demand for electricity grew quickly, requiring the construction of Sheboygan’s Riverside power plant in 1904. The Riverside plant had a total capacity of 2,250 kilowatts. Between 1912 and 1918, monthly consumer demand more than doubled from around 317,000 kilowatt hours to over 679,000 kilowatt hours. This necessitated the addition of a 6,000 kilowatt generator in 1918. Consumer demand continued to grow, and in 1922 a transmission line was placed in service between Sheboygan and Fond du Lac. Later that same year, this line was interconnected with a new line from Fond du Lac to Dane County. Linking the water generated power on the Wisconsin River to the steam generated electricity in Sheboygan contributed to the formation of the basis of the present system of Wisconsin’s transmission lines and electrical grid. In 1929, rural areas around Sheboygan received electrification with the construction of 60 miles of electrical lines. As local and regional demand continued to grow, it became necessary to construct the new Edgewater plant and its 30,000 kilowatt generator in 1931.
As noted in 1939, the Edgewater power plant was a state-of-the-art facility in an industry that first formed locally in 1888. In 1892, Sheboygan’s electrical generating plant had a capacity of only 100 kilowatts and rates were high. Greater usage resulted in rates dropping from 15 cents per kilowatt-hour in 1916 to 4.9 cents in 1939. Edgewater was built in 1931 to maintain pace with increasing demand, with a capacity of 30 megawatts (30,000 kilowatts). Edgewater was:
“…one of the most efficient modern plants of its size in the country. This plant not only furnishes service to Sheboygan but also furnishes service to other cities and villages located at some distance from Sheboygan, through the use of modern transmission lines. The electrical load of the company continues to grow and we are now seriously considering the installation of a second generating unit…This new unit will have a capacity of at least 30,000 kilowatts…and will probably be even more efficient than the one installed in 1931.”
Generating capacity at Edgewater grew as demand grew and as technological innovation progressed. Unit 2, added in 1941 only ten years after the initial construction of the plant, doubled Edgewater’s generating capacity from 30 megawatts to 60 megawatts. Demand continued to increase, necessitating another doubling of generating capacity only ten years later. In response, Unit 3 and its technologically advanced 69-megawatt capacity was brought online in 1951 (bringing the total plant capacity to around 129 megawatts). Unit 4 went online in 1969, adding 330 megawatts (total plant capacity around 459 megawatts), a size brought about through further technological advancement. Unit 5 went online in 1985, adding another 380 megawatts and allowing for the retirement of Units 1 and 2 (total plant capacity around 839 megawatts). The baghouse, constructed in 2016, brought state-of-the-art pollution mitigation technology to the plant. Since that time, Unit 3 and Unit 4 have both been retired with an eye towards decommissioning the entire plant. Plans for decommissioning have changed, and now the plant will remain operational with Unit 5 and the construction of the proposed 99-megawatt Battery Energy Storage System (BESS).
Significance & Integrity -
This power plant, which first went online in 1931, is associated with the industrial development of the City of Sheboygan as well as the development of Wisconsin’s electrical infrastructure. Additionally, the Edgewater Power Plant illustrates the technical evolution of electrical power generation from the early twentieth century through the early twenty-first century, with what were state-of-the-art electrical generating units installed in 1931, 1941, 1951, 1969, and 1985. This illustration of technological evolution is no longer completely intact as the oldest portions of the plant no longer house the boilers, turbines, or generators that constituted Unit 1 (1931) and Unit 2 (1941). This machinery was an integral part of the plant, and its removal has resulted in a loss of historic integrity for this portion of the plant (integrity of materials, feeling, design, and workmanship are all linked to this machinery). Unit 3 (1951), while present, is no longer in service, and the 1951 addition to the plant is the smallest section of the entire power plant building (smaller than even the 1931 portion). The very large scale of the later Unit 4 (1969) addition, the huge Unit 5 (1985) addition (which included both of the extant smokestacks), and the large baghouse addition (2016) all greatly overshadow the oldest portions of the plant.
The changes listed above leaves only a narrow period of time, between 1969 and 1985 (or 1974, corresponding to 50 years ago), that may be of particular historical interest. During that window of time, Unit 1, Unit 2, and Unit 3 were all present and operational, and the plant had three smokestacks (all non-extant, save the bottom portion of the 1969 stack). Integrity is lacking for the period between 1969 and 1985 due to the large 1985 and 2016 additions, the removal of Unit 1 and Unit 2, and the removal of the smokestacks present prior to 1985. As a result, the Edgewater Power Plant lacks integrity and significance -- large portions of the plant lack age and extant older portions lack integrity. Electrical generation has some historic significance in the history of the City of Sheboygan, but the resources associated with that history are non-extant.
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| Bibliographic References: | 2024 - Historic Architectural Survey, Edgewater Battery Energy Storage System (BESS), City of Sheboygan, Sheboygan County, Wisconsin – Stantec
No author, “L. P. Fessenden Honored for 50 Years Utilities Service,” The Sheboygan Press, October 17, 1939, page 9
No author, “Edgewater power plant through the years,” Sheboygan Press
Keith DeBlaey (Edgewater Generating Station, Alliant Energy) in discussion with the authors
Mayor’s Office, “Impact of Alliant Energy Closure Announcement,” City of Sheboygan, June 1, 2020
No author, “Power Plant Addition May Be Completed by June 1,” The Sheboygan Press, April 18, 1951, page 14
No author, “A New Look at Edgewater,” The Sheboygan Press, August 7, 1968, page 14
Loren Sperry, “WP&L To Expand Edgewater Unit,” The Sheboygan Press, December 10, 1975, pages 1 and 12
No author, “PSC, DNR at Loggerheads,” The Sheboygan Press, January 7, 1980, page 32
Eric Litke, “Edgewater is Alliant’s Showpiece,” The Sheboygan Press, April 30, 2008, pages 1 and 2
Phillip Bock, “Clean air with tech upgrades,” The Sheboygan Press, June 23, 2016, pages 1 and 5
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