A full 65 feet of Bedford limestone rises from the median of Wisconsin Avenue in front of you: the Midsummer Carnival Shaft, designed by Alfred C. Clas for the festival begun in 1898. The city commissioned Clas to design and construct this limestone pillar as part of the Milwaukee Midsummer Carnival, the annual festival begun in 1898 to honor Wisconsin’s semicentennial that ran until 1901. The shaft is carved from Bedford limestone and rises a full 65 feet (20 m), nearly as tall as the buildings that frame the avenue.
Clas, born in Sauk City, Wisconsin in 1860, was a local architect and city planner and a partner in the firm Ferry & Clas, a firm responsible for much of the city planning and development here. The placement of the single pillar in the median makes it a work meant to catch the eye of passersby rather than to be studied for long periods—a public marker of festival and civic pride. Set alone in the median, the pillar was built to catch a passerby's eye rather than hold it, a marker of festival and civic pride from a carnival that ended in 1901.