Showing 321-340 of 440 Entries
Author: Brian Mueller
Milwaukee radio developed as a result of cooperation between educational institutions and commercial media. These public and private entities built the technology necessary for radio to flourish and developed the programming that spread across the airwaves. AM radio arrived in Milwaukee in the early 1920s, followed by FM radio in the early 1940s, and then…
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Author: H. Roger Grant
As the Railway Age developed, Milwaukee enthusiastically welcomed the iron horse. Boosters recognized that participation in the emerging national network of railroads could provide local farmers and manufacturers access to wide markets and bring desirable goods and immigrants to the city, bolstering its economic growth. But the city failed to emerge as the railroad mecca…
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Author: Matthew J. Prigge
The practice of dancing for amusement in Milwaukee dates back to the area’s pioneer days. By the 1840s, notices for formal dances appeared in local newspapers. These dances, promoted as “balls,” were held at hotels and often raised money for charitable purposes. Soon, a number of dance schools were operating in the city. These institutions…
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Author: Jenna Himsl
A privately owned producer of aluminum and stainless steel cookware, Regal Ware Worldwide is headquartered in Washington County. The company employs about 300 workers at its corporate and manufacturing facilities in Kewaskum and West Bend. In 2014, over half of Regal Ware’s sales of its American-made products were in foreign markets. Founded by James O.…
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Author: John D. Buenker
The Milwaukee Republican Party (MRP) was founded during the tumultuous 1850s as the nation was careening headlong into the Civil War. In a bewildering sequence, the Great Compromise, the Kansas-Nebraska Act, the Kansas Civil War, and the Dred Scott decision cumulatively obliterated all federal control over the expansion of slavery. Restoring that authority was the…
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Author: James K. Nelsen
Rethinking Schools is a nonprofit, independent publisher of educational material, most known for its magazine, which is also named Rethinking Schools. It promotes anti-racist, multicultural education in elementary and secondary teaching and in educational policy making. It is a sharp critic of standardized testing and is a strong proponent of public education and social justice.…
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Author: Karalee Surface
The Rexnord Corporation came about due to a merger in the 1970 and over time has become a major supplier of power transmission machinery and water management systems. During the last four decades this company has undergone numerous ownership changes but has maintained its profitability by actively diversifying its product lines and cultivating a strong…
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Author: Katie Steffan
The RiverWalk is a pedestrian walkway along the MILWAUKEE RIVER in DOWNTOWN Milwaukee. SOCIALIST city planners first envisioned the RiverWalk in the early 20th century, and a segment was built outside the Gimbels Department Store in the late 1920s. In the 1980s, Mayor HENRY MAIER revived the idea and pushed for a connected system of…
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Author: Tom Tolan
Riverwest is a neighborhood in the city of Milwaukee bounded by the Milwaukee River on the east and south, N. Holton Street on the west, and E. Capitol Drive on the north. The neighborhood’s first development was at dams on the river in the mid-1830s—one located just south of present-day Capitol Drive, the other south…
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Author: Carl Baehr
Generally, roads link distant places together, while streets provide access within a community. Before Europeans came to the Milwaukee area, Indian trails served as the way to travel from one place to another. They provided routes between what would later become cities and towns, like WAUKESHA to EAGLE or WEST BEND to PORT WASHINGTON. Many…
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Author: Joseph B. Walzer
Robert Schilling (1843-1922) was a significant labor leader and reformist politician in Milwaukee in the late nineteenth century. Born in Osterburg, Saxony, Schilling migrated with his family to St. Louis in 1846. He began work as a cooper at thirteen, and, fluent in both German and English, quickly became a prominent leader of the Coopers’…
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Author: Diana Belscamper
Robert George “Bob” Uecker is best known as a Milwaukee Brewers’ radio broadcaster, but he also has gained fame as a national baseball commentator, actor, author, and commercial spokesman. Born in Milwaukee on January 26, 1935, Uecker grew up watching the minor league Milwaukee Brewers at Borchert Field and aspired to a professional baseball career.…
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Author: Diana Belscamper
Drafted at age eighteen, Robin Yount became an everyday starter for the Milwaukee Brewers in his first season and played his entire major league baseball career (1974-1993) with the Brewers. Yount led the team to the World Series in 1982 and earned two league MVP awards (shortstop, 1982; centerfield, 1989). Collecting more hits during the…
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Author: Diana Belscamper
Roller derby was a sports entertainment phenomenon in the 1950s, gained a new generation of fans via television in the 1970s, and underwent a twenty-first century resurgence with a feminist impulse. As part of this third wave of organized roller derby, the BrewCity Bruisers began holding “bouts” in 2006 at the Milwaukee County Sports Complex.…
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Author: Steven M. Avella
Roman Catholicism has been an important social and cultural force in the history of Milwaukee from the putative beginnings of white settlement in the area with Solomon Juneau. Juneau himself and his wife, Josette Vieau Juneau, were Catholics. Father Florimond Bonduel, an itinerant priest from Belgium, celebrated the Catholic Mass in their home. From this…
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Author: Bethany Harding
Prominent Milwaukee editor and political activist Rufus King was born in New York City on January 26, 1814. He was the son of Charles King, longtime editor of the New York American, and the grandson of another Rufus King who helped author the United States Constitution. King attended the preparatory academy at Columbia College before…
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Author: Diana Belscamper
Numerous annual races serve as fundraisers for local charities and organizations. One of the largest of these, Briggs & Al’s Run & Walk for Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin, has raised over $14 million since its first running in 1977. The Milwaukee County Zoo’s Samson Stomp & Romp was first run in 1981; its proceeds benefit…
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Author: Bill Reck
Immigrants from the part of the world that was the Russian Empire until 1917, the Soviet Union until 1989, and the Russian Federation today, arrived in two waves, at two different bookends of the twentieth century. In 1910 some 15,000 people reported that they were born in “Russia” in the Milwaukee metro area. Of those,…
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Author: Jenna Himsl
From its entry into Milwaukee in 1889, the Salvation Army has pursued its two-part mission to “preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and to meet human needs in His name without discrimination.” Captain Samuel Neil, his wife, and four companions established Milwaukee’s first Salvation Army center on what is now North Plankinton Avenue. In 1893,…
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Author: Neal Pease
From the turn of the twentieth century until the years immediately following World War II, grassroots baseball built around local teams and leagues was an important participatory and spectator sport in Milwaukee and in other major northeastern and midwestern cities. Operating below the level of full-fledged professionalism, the game played by these teams was commonly…
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