Downtown Milwaukee Barn Find!

19th Century Guillotine Paper Cutter Found in Basement of Famed Restaurant

(Written in July 2023)

A blazing red sun sinks in an ashen orange sky with clouds billowing with wildfire smoke from Canada. Down below, a streetcar creaks down Broadway, heading to the train station. Guests wearing face coverings, dark glasses and caps, slip into a brick alley entrance.

They whisper a secret word, disappear behind a door disguised as a fireplace with logs glowing red. Inside, an operative named “Copper” in a low-cut black slip dress and hair the color of an Abraham Lincoln penny, serves classic cocktails.

Welcome to Safe Haven, Milwaukee’s harbor for spies and wanna-bees ever since 1966. Another operative takes a journalist down winding steps into a basement past a rack of restaurant uniforms, yellow cleaning buckets and mops. A low ceiling of peeling paneled tin tiles is within reach, a remnant of 1900s decor or maybe even 1850 when the building was built.

The operative best known as “Alex” and journalist (courtesy of restaurant owner Marcus Enterprises) walk until they reach a door. He unlocks it, inside there’s a player piano sized machine, a guillotine paper cutter, circa 1880. The nearly rusty machine nearly grazes the low ceiling. Its approximate 40 inch wide bed, a mix of a dull green finish and rust. An old rubber belt hangs limp on its size nearly grazes the low ceiling, probably powered by the foot pedal.

The machine predates Safe Haven by more than 100 years. It survived two world wars, a pandemic, a plandemic and a technology revolution.

In 1880, the Safe Haven building had an address of 463-465 Front St. A printer named George Richardson did business at this location in 1887, followed by Lakeside Publishing Co. in 1894. Both could have used the machine, along with a printing press that was scrapped sometime after the 1960s, according to Safe Haven employee Mark Peternel.

Museum of Printing (Haverhill, Mass.) President Frank Romano thinks the cutter was either manufactured by Challenger Manufacturing (established in Chicago, now in Farmington Hills, Michigan) or its a knock-off. The lack of ornamentation is one clue that this rusty machine is a knock off. Another clue are the words “The White,” likely the name of a type foundry hired to make the crude knock-off.

Most likely the machine parts were transported inside a wood crate by rail and horse-drawn carriage and assembled inside the basement. It’s not exactly what Richardson and Lakeside Printing printed and sold, but this kind of a cutter was used for maps, books, catalogues, brochures, posters, but not newspapers.

The cutter’s so rusty and unsafe for use, no one wants it. Not even a museum. “I turn down offers (for cutters),” Romano says. What’s ore, the Safehaven cutter is too big to remove, so the machine will likely stay inside the Safe Haven building for decades to come.

Massive cutter nearly crazes the ceiling of the lowest-level of old Downtown Milwaukee building.

No one knows who The White is. Frank Romano speculates it might be have been a competitor foundry making this knock-off cutter.

It’s unlikely anyone besides employees will see this cutter (save for this lucky journalist), so don’t hold out hopes for a sneak-peek in a future Open Doors Milwaukee.

If you want to see a real-deal old cutter in action, the Bindery in Milwaukee has one. Go there to see paper crisply cut the old-fashioned way.