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Showing 121-140 of 440 Entries

Eschweiler Buildings

Author: Catherine Jones
The Eschweiler Buildings on the Milwaukee County Grounds, such as this abandoned Milwaukee County School of Agriculture and Domestic Economy building, have been the focus of historic preservation efforts.
The Eschweiler & Eschweiler architectural firm was one of the most prolific in Milwaukee’s history, designing everything from community spaces, private homes, and places of worship, to industrial factories and commercial buildings. Some of their most notable buildings include the MILWAUKEE GAS LIGHT BUILDING, the MILWAUKEE ARENA, the Wisconsin Telephone Co. Building, the Milwaukee County… Read More

Falk Corporation

Author: Karalee Surface
A group of male employees work with heavy industrial equipment inside Falk Corporation in 1963.
Situated in the heart of the Menomonee Valley, the Falk Corporation has been a fixture of Milwaukee’s industrial landscape for over 120 years. Family-owned until the late 1960s, the company developed a reputation as both “a good name in industry” and a good place to work. Focusing on the production of gears, Falk helped modernize… Read More

Festa Italiana

Author: Michael Pulido
Photograph of the 1980 Festa Italiana procession winding through a crowd of people. The procession features flags, religious and cultural figures, and people in traditional clothing.
Festa Italiana, held annually since 1978, represented the first of Milwaukee’s modern ethnic festivals and an effort to recapture the spirit of a vanishing community. In the 1960s, Milwaukee’s urban renewal plans led to the demolition of Our Blessed Virgin of Pompeii Church in Milwaukee’s Third Ward. By the time the little pink church had… Read More

Festivals

Author: Matthew J. Prigge
Festivals have long been a major part of the cultural, social, and economic fabric of Milwaukee. Early festivals were often celebrations of a shared ethnic heritage. As the turn of the century approached, city leaders recognized the potential of these events to draw visitors from across the nation, and Milwaukee began to emerge as a… Read More

Filipinos

Author: William I. Tchakirides
The arrival of Filipinos in the Milwaukee metropolitan area took place after World War II. The Philippines were a United States colonial possession from the end of the Spanish American War in 1898 until the South Pacific nation gained its independence in 1946. Although the U.S. Government denied naturalization rights to Filipino migrants during these… Read More

Finns

Author: Bill Reck
Finns started to arrive in Wisconsin and Milwaukee in the final decade of the nineteenth century and the first two in the twentieth, though Milwaukee’s Finnish immigration increased most rapidly between 1910 and 1930. The Finnish ancestry population was small. In 1930, about 1,400 people in the Milwaukee metro area reported their father’s birthplace was… Read More

Florentine Opera Company

Author: Karalee Surface
As one of Wisconsin’s oldest professional music organizations, this company earned the city national recognition for over seventy years. Formed in 1933 as the Italian Chorus at the Jackson Street Social Center, according to one source, the group originally intended to attract immigrants to English language classes that would prepare them for American citizenship. Their… Read More

Flour Milling

Author: Bethany Harding
Artist's sketch of an Eagle Flouring Mills building. Opened in in 1844 by John Anderson, it came under the management of John B.A. Kern in 1866 and was one of the largest mills in the area.
Flour milling became Milwaukee’s first manufacturing industry of note during the middle and late nineteenth century. The city’s first flour mill opened in 1844, and the rate of production increased steadily throughout the 1840s and 1850s as additional mills began operation. Despite steady growth, however, Milwaukee’s flour industry experienced its largest boom after 1870. Prior… Read More

Food

Author: Michael Carriere
Even though it is a brutally cold December day in the city, the Milwaukee Public Market—an indoor collection of close to twenty food and drink vendors that opened in 2005—is packed. It is lunchtime, and men and women who work downtown are taking advantage of the market’s proximity to the office towers that they will… Read More

Food Processing

Author: Joseph B. Walzer
Jacob Nunnemacher's farm and distillery were located on the far western edge of the Town of Lake, on the east side of what became 27th Street, just north of Howard Avenue.
Throughout Milwaukee’s history, firms of different sizes preserved, processed, and packaged raw ingredients from Wisconsin farms, producing an array of foodstuffs, including alcoholic beverages, baked goods, candy, and ice cream. Many of these specialties derived from skills that pioneer settlers and later immigrants brought with them and developed over time. Production and preservation of food… Read More

Football

Author: Michael D. Benter
Photograph of the 1936 Marquette University football team. This competitive team played against Texas Christian University in the Cotton Bowl.
Milwaukee has a rich football history at a variety of levels: amateur, collegiate, high school, and professional. Although the sport had already attracted public interest in the nation and the state, perhaps the first notable game played in Milwaukee came on November 23, 1889, when a team sponsored by the Calumet Club defeated the University… Read More

Frank Zeidler

Author: James J. Casey, Jr.
Mayor Frank Zeidler signs a Book of Remembrance while members of the Zionist Organization of America look on in this 1949 photograph.
Frank Paul Zeidler (September 20, 1912-July 7, 2006) was the forty-first mayor of Milwaukee, serving from April 20, 1948 to April 18, 1960. His successful tenure coincided with the last dynamic period of growth in Milwaukee. While the post of mayor is nonpartisan, he is known as the last Socialist mayor of a major American… Read More

Franklin

Author: Doug Schmidt
Franklin originated as a heavily wooded, 36-square-mile frontier bordering Racine County and bisected by the Root River. It was inhabited by the Potawatomi and Menominee Indian tribes until the mid-1830s, when German, Dutch, and Irish immigrants began arriving to clear the land for farming. Milwaukee County put land up for sale at $1.25 per acre,… Read More

Fredonia

Author: Niles Niemuth
On June 14, 1885, the nation's first observation of Flag Day was held at Stony Hill School in Waubeka in the Town of Fredonia.
The Town of Fredonia is located in the northwestern corner of OZAUKEE COUNTY. The Town of Fredonia was created out a portion of the Town of Port Washington in 1847. The Town contains the Village of Fredonia and the unincorporated communities of Waubeka and Little Kohler. The Town of Fredonia was settled by GERMAN and… Read More

French

Author: Bill Reck
The Milwaukee area’s French heritage predates the history of the city. For thousands of years, the area at which Milwaukee would be founded was populated by American Indian groups. During the seventeenth century, French missionaries and fur traders, representing both France and the French colony of New France, began to populate areas of northern Wisconsin.… Read More

Frozen Custard

Author: Matthew Costello
Photograph of Leon's Frozen Custard stand and drive-in, located on South 27th and Oklahoma.
Frozen custard caused a sensation at the 1933 World’s Fair in Chicago. Although similar to ice cream, custard contains more cream and less milk, along with egg yolk and butterfat, which gives it a smoother texture and richer taste than ice cream. Following the fair, Wisconsinites brought it north, opening custard stands in the greater… Read More

Fur Trading

Author: Bethany Harding
During the early European settlement period, Milwaukee was one of several fur trading posts along the western Great Lakes. Wisconsin’s fur trade originated in the second half of the seventeenth century when the French began exchanging rum and other small items for peltry from local tribes. By the mid-1700s, fur trading had become a fixture… Read More

Fusion Party

Author: Thomas J. Jablonsky
Portrait of Gerhard Bading, Milwaukee's victorious fusion candidate in 1912 and 1914.
To blunt the potential of a labor candidate for mayor in 1888, Milwaukee Republicans and Democrats successfully merged their interests through a unity or fusion ticket. A similar tactic was used in 1908 within several aldermanic campaigns. Then immediately after SOCIALIST EMIL SEIDEL won the 1910 mayoral election, the Milwaukee Sentinel prophetically called for unity… Read More

Garbage

Author: Kathleen Foss
At the time of Milwaukee’s founding as three separate communities, the concept of “garbage” did not exist in the way we think of it today. Household wastes such as digestive products were deposited in privy vaults, food remains were composted or fed to family hogs or chickens, and firewood ash was either used for soap… Read More

Gas Company Flame

Author: Catherine Jones
The bright blue flame in this photograph predicts the same weather tomorrow.
The iconic Gas Company Flame was added on top of the ESCHWEILER-designed WISCONSIN GAS BUILDING in 1956. Standing 21 feet and weighing 4 tons, the beacon provides navigational light for Lake Michigan vessels and indicates the local weather forecast by its color. The flame contained neon and argon tubing, but by spring 2014 was replaced… Read More
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