Showing 361-380 of 440 Entries
Author: Steven M. Avella
This institution is the major training facility for Roman Catholic priests who serve in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. It also forms young clergy who serve in other parts of Wisconsin and sections of the Midwest. Moreover, some of its graduates are found in Rome and Africa. Although it currently does not support an accredited academic…
Read More
Author: Barbara Haig
Despite its urban location, Milwaukee is a beneficiary of Wisconsin’s investment in protecting natural areas. The Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources manages the state’s forests, parks, and trails. Three are housed in Milwaukee County: Hank Aaron State Trail, Havenwoods State Forest, and Lakeshore State Park. Winding through an area once home to Native Americans and,…
Read More
Author: Carl Baehr
The city of Milwaukee combined three formerly competing villages when it incorporated in 1846. Because the villages had been striving to be unique, each had its own street layout and street-naming scheme. Juneautown, east of the Milwaukee River, was named for its French Canadian fur-trading founder, SOLOMON JUNEAU. Many of its streets were given the…
Read More
Author: Michael A. Gordon
The U.S. Department of Labor defines a labor strike as “a temporary stoppage of work by a group of workers (not necessarily union members) to express a grievance or enforce a demand.” The prevalence of strike action has waxed and waned over the course of Milwaukee and the nation’s history, as particular industries have grown…
Read More
Author: Barbara Haig
Launched in 1968, Summerfest is a multi-day event held in June and July featuring music, food, shopping, and family activities that bring more than 800,000 people to the Henry W. Maier Festival Park on the Milwaukee lakefront. Billed as “The World’s Largest Music Festival” by the Guinness Book of World Records in 1999, fans of…
Read More
Author: Bill Reck
According to the 2009-2013 American Community Survey, some 27,000 people in the Milwaukee metropolitan area identify themselves as of Swedish ancestry. Despite these numbers, the state’s and Milwaukee’s Swedish population, arriving in their largest numbers in the late nineteenth century, never represented a substantial portion of the population either in the city or outstate, and…
Read More
Author: Bill Reck
The Swiss population in Milwaukee has not been a large one over the years, but Swiss immigrants and their descendants have contributed to Milwaukee’s political, religious, and cultural climates in critical ways. In 1930, some 4,000 people in the metro area reported their father’s birthplace as Switzerland. In the early twenty first century, some 8,000…
Read More
Author: Bill Reck
Milwaukee’s Syrian population dates to the late nineteenth century, when villagers from Ain Bordai, near present-day Baalbek in Lebanon, arrived in Chicago for the World’s Fair. At the time, Syria was a province in the Ottoman Empire. With the collapse of the Ottoman Empire at the end of World War I, the region came under…
Read More
Author: Michael Pulido
For most American sports fans, tailgating brings to mind cool fall days, with smoke wafting through the parking lot in the hours before kickoff. However, for MILWAUKEE BREWERS fans, tailgating is the public manner in which one eats, drinks, plays, and socializes before the first pitch at Miller Park, where the parking lots function as…
Read More
Author: Michael Paulson
Telecommunications technologies use electronic signals over cables and the electro-magnetic spectrum to allow people to send and receive information quickly over great distances. Milwaukee has a history of ever-changing technologies, with varying levels of competition and regulation of the services used to connect Milwaukee to the world. Telecommunication began in Milwaukee when the Erie &…
Read More
Author: William I. Tchakirides
Television debuted in Milwaukee during the medium’s “Golden Age” from the late 1940s through the early 1960s. The city’s local networks were pioneers broadcasting on both the VHF and UHF frequencies. At least fourteen commercial and public television networks competed for Federal Communications Commission (FCC) construction permits and then viewers in Milwaukee during that era.…
Read More
Author: Lex Renda
Temperance, or the crusade against alcohol in Jacksonian and antebellum America, resulted in the first support groups for alcoholics, the first local license laws, and then (in the 1850s and mostly in the Northeast and Midwest) statewide laws banning the manufacture and sale of liquor. The movement coincided with the settlement of Wisconsin and Milwaukee,…
Read More
Author: Karalee Surface
Home to world famous theater couple Alfred Lunt and his wife Lynn Fontanne, Ten Chimneys earned National Historic Landmark status in the early 2000s. Lunt, a Milwaukee native, bought the site in 1913 and began building the house a year later. The Lunts brought in famed theater set designer Claggett Wilson to paint elaborate murals…
Read More
Author: Michael E. Stevens
The Treaty of Paris (1783), which ended the American Revolution, recognized the legal jurisdiction of the United States over lands north of the Ohio River. For the next sixty-five years, the area that became Milwaukee fell under the jurisdiction of various federal territories. Although the authority of the federal government over what would become Wisconsin…
Read More
Author: Karalee Surface
This experimental troupe was recognized for producing unique and unconventional plays. Formed by a group of theater faculty and students from the UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MILWAUKEE in 1969, they first made waves with their production of The Measure’s Taken at the 1970 International Brecht Symposium. Their 1978 production of A Fierce Longing earned a prestigious Off-Broadway…
Read More
Author: Genevieve G. McBride
Theodora Winton Youmans (1863-1932) was the first Wisconsin-born leader and last president of the Wisconsin Woman Suffrage Association (WWSA), which she reorganized as the Wisconsin League of Women Voters. She led lobbying to win the state’s historic first ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. A prominent journalist, she joined the Waukesha Freeman in the 1880s and…
Read More
Author: Carl Baehr
At about 5:40 p.m. on Friday, October 28, 1892, spontaneous combustion in the Union Oil and Paint Company building on the Milwaukee River at Water Street, south of St. Paul Avenue, caused a fire. Strong winds swirling from the west and northwest pushed the fire east to Lake Michigan and south to Erie Street. By…
Read More
Author: Joseph B. Walzer
Milwaukee has hosted many visitors for organizational meetings, major conventions, and personal or business travel throughout its history. The city’s tourism industry grew along with the city, as an array of businesses, organizations, and civic leaders worked both independently and together to attract, accommodate, and ultimately profit from these guests. Milwaukee’s earliest visitors were often…
Read More
Author: Krista Grensavitch
Located in west-central WASHINGTON COUNTY, the Town of Addison borders Dodge County to the west, the TOWN OF WAYNE to the north, the TOWN OF HARTFORD to the south, and the TOWNS OF BARTON and WEST BEND to the east. Settled predominantly by Germans following the regional completion of the U.S. Public Land Survey, the…
Read More
Author: Olivia Boeck
The Town of Barton occupies 19.5 square miles in WASHINGTON COUNTY, 37 miles northwest of downtown Milwaukee. The town is governed by a town board made up of five members. The town is home to the unincorporated community of Young America. The early histories of town and village of Barton were intertwined. The Village of…
Read More
