Milwaukee County WI Archives History .....Milwaukee 
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Tina Vickery tsvickery@adelphia.net March 16, 2007, 3:41 pm

MILWAUKEE.

To most persons first impressions of a new locality outweigh
quantities of subsequent information. Therefore we who
admire this charming city, and desire every one else to do
so, recommend you to arrive by water. Milwaukee stands
exactly in the centre of the globe: all the world is open to
her easterly by lake and ocean; westerly, by land.
Approaching on the steamboat from Chicago, or Grand Haven,
or the North., one first descries at dawn the bluff's upon
which the town is built, and advances toward it with the
rising sun.

The water through which you press your way, leaving behind a
foaming and rainbow-touched wake, is green in the morning
light with that special tint held by crude petroleum, and it
is penetrated writh beams of slanting light that lend it a
brightly fibrous appearance, entirely different from ocean
water. Glancing ahead, the eye catches a blue and bluer
reflection, until, far away, indigo is the only color.
Nearing the coast, you speedily detect a sharp line, three
or four miles from shore, where the blue water stops, and a
pale verdigris-green tint begins. This shows a sudden
shallow, and marks the real old coast-line, upon which the
river-mouth has encroached in a deep indentation. A few
moments later the steamer has passed the breakwater, which
is fringed with fish-poles, like an abatis, has got by the
miniature lighthouse and the pretty life-saving station, has
turned the elbow into the river, and is poking its way along
the narrow channel, between elevators, warehouses, and
railway structures, through swinging bridges and a maze of
shipping, up to its wharf in the centre of the city.

There is this disadvantage in this, ingress, however, that
you see too much of the river at first. It is a narrow,
tortuous stream, hemmed in by the unsightly rear ends of
street buildings and all sorts of waste places; it is a
currentless and yellowish murky stream, with water like oil,
and an odor combined of the effluvia of a hundred sewers.
Nothing could better illustrate the contaminations of city
life than the terrible change its waters undergo in a mile
from their sparkling' and rural cleanliness, up above, into
this vile and noxious compound here among the wharves. Yet
it is the very centre of the city's business, and to its
presence Milwaukee owes its beginning, and a large part of
its present existence. The nasty waters uphold a crowded
and. ever-busy fleet, and float grain steamers too long to
turn around there.

We are informed that the very earliest civilized knowledge
of the site of Milwaukee goes back to about the year 1674,
and to that indefatigable missionary and keen adventurer,
Father Marquette. That he took any special notice of the
locality, does not appear. Later, other French missionaries
and traders, journeying southward from Green Bay, which they
called St. Francis Xavier, and which was the western outpost
of, the Jesuits during the early half of the last century,
went ashore here at long intervals, and visited the Indians,
who seem to have made the mouth of the river a permanent
abiding place; but for more than a hundred years after the
Abbes Joly and Marquette were there, nobody thought well
enough of the place to stay there. 

I can fancy various features about the locality at that time
not altogether inviting. The long line bluff's which form
the western shore of Lake Michigan was broken by a gap of
half a dozen miles, where a shallow bay rounded in. The low
inner shore of this bay amounted to little else than an
immense swamp of wild rice, with a sand-bar and a hill or
two to break the surf, and a distant view of forest-clad
hills and oak openings beyond, and bluffs to the northward.
Finding a devious way through this swamp came a river from
the north, a smaller stream from the south, and a little
rivulet from the west.

Such geography would scarcely prove attractive to a
frontiersman, when so much better land was ready to his
choice. But commerce stepped in ahead of aesthetics, and
dictated the foundation of a city, where presently the
aesthetic was quite content to reside —which means that it
was a capital place for an Indian to get his living, and
that accordingly it became the permanent camp or head-
quarters of a community of them. The tribe found in
possession by the first traders were the Mishimakinaks, whom
the very first mention introduces to us as "those
runagates.... a horrid set of refractory Indians." Just in
what they proved " refractory," Colonel Peyster fails to
tell us.

There is still greater doubt as to the meaning and correct
orthography of the name. The first time it occurs is in
Lieutenant James Gorrett's journal, September 1, 1761, where
he states that a party of Indians came from Milwacky.
Colonel Peyster writes it Milwakie. In 1820 Dr. Morse
records that Mil-wah-kie was settled by the Sacs and Foxes,
and that the name was derived from the word man-awahie,
meaning "good land," which recalls Peyster's assertion that
the name of the river was Mahn-a-waukie. A Chippewa
interpreter spelled it with fewer letters, but confirms the
rendering, "good" or "beautiful" land. The French seem to
have written it Milouaqui in their early dispatches home.

The Indians' town was at the very mouth of the river, and
buried its dead on the hill which now forms the abrupt foot
of Michigan Street. Their chief was Onaugesa, a Menomonee,
whom Laframboise, the first trader from Mackinac, found to
he "a good Indian." Laframboise retired after a while, and
his brother succeeded him, but did not get along so well. It
appears that one of Onaugesa's boon companions was an
alleged poet named Pashano. In some affaire de coeur the
trader offended the poet's sensitive soul, who retaliated by
prejudicing the chief against him, the result of which was
that the man of business soon abandoned his post. When
Onaugesa realized that he had foolishly cut off his nose to
spite his face—to wit, driven away the trader who had
regularly supplied him with rum in exchange for his good-
will—he reflected upon the source of his misfortunes, and in
a day or two the meddlesome laureate went mysteriously to
the happy hunting grounds. This began a vendetta that made
the whole region too hot for traders for several years.
Finally, however, a French half-breed named Vieau began
coming down every spring from Green Bay, and going back in
the fall. He did so well that after a few years another
Frenchman, who had been his clerk, built himself warehouses,
married Vieau's daughter, and becoming popular among the
Indians, proposed to settle permanently here. This young man
was Solomon Juneau, and his block-house stood where now is
the intersection of East Water and Wisconsin streets.

This happened only about 1820, yet it reads like a romance
of at least five hundred years ago. For several years Juneau
was the sole white inhabitant of the region, only
occasionally visited by a wandering trader, trapper, or
missionary. The nearest post to him was a "miserable
settlement called Eschikagon, at the mouth of Skunk River,
some ninety miles across dense forests to the south." All
supplies came by water from Mackinac, the head-quarters of
the American Fur Company, and the settlers lived a far more
isolated and truly frontier life than it is possible to do
now anywhere in the United States except in Alaska.

Juneau was sharp, and in 1831 secured from the Indians a
cession of all the region, claiming for himself a large
tract on the east side of the river. Then he began to
advertise_the advantages of settlement there, and one by one
got neighbors. 

Among the earliest were two gentlemen whose names are
household words in the city—Byron Kilbourn and George H.
Walker. They had enterprise and knowledge and money.
Kilbourn took up a tract on the west side, and Walker south
of the Menomonee, and for many years after, these quarters
of the city were known respectively as "Kilbourntown" and
"Walker's Point." In 1834, Milwaukee County was set apart
from Brown County, which has since been similarly subdivided
a score of times, until its former ducal proportions are
reduced to a mere hand-breadth at Green Bay. This act showed
the enterprise of the pioneers, for there were then not
white men enough in the region to fill the offices provided
for by the county organization. More kept coming, however,
from Detroit and Buffalo and New England, and the wheezy
steamboats of that early day in lake navi gation began to
make the struggling village a stopping-place.

Juneau's log warehouse was the headquarters for gossip. ''
Here were wont to congregate," says the chronicler Wheeler,
"pioneers and sailors to hear long-expected tidings which
had floundered through mud and forests and over prairies for
weeks before they reached the settlement; on the same spot
the merchants and multitude generally now read from a
bulletin the news of the world, which comes fresh and
quivering over the Avires from every point of the compass
once a day."

Such was the irregular, muddy, prosaic beginning of this
great and attractive lake port. One hears a pleasant or a
comical incident now and then, of Indian threats which sound
thrilling, till you find they never amounted to action, and
of adventures that wore almost perilous; but really there is
little romance about it. A town grew up, partly on a sand-
hill, and partly in a mud-hole (one being cut down to fill
the other up), because men found they could accumulate
wealth there.

Nearly all this money was to be made through commercial
channels, and these channels led down the river and up the
lakes—as channels are very likely to do. However, they were
not deep and broad enough for the great vessels which in
imagination (and finally in fact) were to enter the port.
The first public effort, therefore, was directed toward
harbor improvement, but it was several years before the
general government would listen to the call for help.
Congress was deaf in its Northwest ear, as Major Domo, a
famous character, used to say. Finally it appropriated
$30,000, and grandly wasted it in the wrong place. The river
runs along parallel with the lake shore for more than a
mile, only separated from it by a narrow strip of beach.
Common-sense suggested the cutting through of this bar close
up to the town, but the engineers preferred to construct a
harbor a mile away, down at the mouth. The result was that
Chicago scored a big point in its rivalry, and Milwaukee a
few years later had to make her "straight-cut" through the
beach where she should have done it at first. This gave her
what some persons have called the best harbor on the upper
lakes, albeit it is only a narrow river and two short
breakwaters. Now it is proposed to run out into the bay for
several hundreds of yards an immense stone jetty, costing a
million or two, and thus form the bay into a harbor of
refuge; but this is not begun yet. 

All these expensive harbor improvements would never have
been undertaken, of course, had not the trading post grown
with marvellous speed into a city and shipping port; and
this, in turn, would never have •come about had not there
been a rich agricultural region behind it, and a large
Influx of farming population. When one remembers that fifty
years ago • Wisconsin was an utter wilderness, a howling,
untutored, worthless stretch of forest and prairie; sees now
the universal cultivation of all its southern half; marks
how the pine woods are disappearing in the north, and how
immigrants are scattering themselves singly and in colonies
over all that region—he is amazed that so much could have
been done in so short a time. But comprehending- this fact,
the concomitant—namely, that such populous centres should
arise as Chicago, Milwaukee, La Crosse, St. Paul,
Minneapolis, and the other large towns of the "Golden
Northwest"—causes no wonder at all.

With her harbor built, her ships accumulating, Milwaukee was
quick to see that she must adopt the new invention of
railways, and began to extend lines inland to bring the
crops to her "granaries. The railways built their tracks
down on the flats, and helped to fill in large areas. They
placed their stations, freight depots, and shops there, and
attracted business, until now the old miles square of marsh
has dwindled to a few well-curbed canals and deep slips
where vessels lie to be loaded. Chiefly, however, the
railways served the interests of Milwaukee in making it not
only an easily accessible buying market for the rural
districts, but the most available point at which to dispose
of crops.

In order to handle these vast crops, which are poured into
the city at harvest-time and later, several of those
enormous buildings called elevators have been built by the
railway companies and by private enterprise. All lake-port
and sea-port citizens are very familiar with these
structures and their use, which is for the storage and
transhipment of grain, but they Will perhaps pardon an
explanation of them to the more benighted people who live
off the "trunk lines". 

In order to begin at the beginning—get to the bottom, as it
were, of an elevator— one must climb to the very top. The
building is perhaps one hundred and fifty feet long by
seventy-five feet wide, and, like all of its class, it rises
eighty feet or more to the eaves, above which a narrow top
part, forty or fifty feet higher, is perched upon the ridge-
pole. It is built of wood, sheathed with corrugated iron a
little way tip, and then slated the rest of the way.
Entering one end, where two railway tracks run into the
building, we find a narrow wooden stairway, and begin our
ascent. The flights are short ones, but eighteen are stepped
over before we emerge into the topmost attic. Alongside of
us, as we climbed, has been running the strong belt which
carries the power from the great engine on the ground-floor
to the gearing in the roof—a belt of rubber canvas four feet
wide, and perhaps two hundred and fifty feet long. When
grain is bought—perhaps a hundred car-loads from the vast
fields of Dakota or the wide farms between here and St.
Paul—the train is backed right into the elevator, and stands
so that opposite each car door is a receiver, which is a
kind of vat, or hopper, in the platform. By the help of
steam-shovels, operating almost automatically, two men in
each car will in ten minutes or less empty the whole train.

As fast as the grain is dumped, the receiver delivers it to
iron buckets holding about a peck each, which are attached
to endless belts, and travel up a sort of chimney, called a
"leg," to this roof chamber. These buckets will hoist 6000
bushels an hour at their ordinary rate of speed. That is
equal to one bucket going up 24,000 times, at the rate of
400 times a minute—tolerably lively work! To-day up here in
the topmost loft there is nothing doing, and we are saved
strangulation. The light hardly penetrates through the
cobwebbed windows, and the most pulverous of dust lies
everywhere half an inch deep, showing the marks of a few
boot soles, many foot-prints of rats, and the lace-like
tracks of hundreds of spiders and bugs. You step over and
under broad horizontal bolts as you make your way gingerly
from one end of the attic to the other. They run the fans
that winnow the grain as it comes up in the buckets, after
which it is dropped into the hoppers, ten feet wide, and
twice as deep, that open like hatchways every few feet in
the centre of the floor. Now all is perfectly quiet; we are
so high that even the clamor of the wharves does not roach
us. But when the machinery starts in motion, then fearful
roars, and clash of cogs, and whipping of slackened belts,
assault the garret, until this whole upper region rocks like
a ship in a gale, and chaff and dust cloud the eyes and
stifle the throat.

Descending one story, we find another garret, with nothing
in it but the square bodies of the hoppers. Going down a
second flight shows us that the hoppers are suspended not
upon pillars, but loosely on iron stirrups, so as to shake a
little, and the iron gate which lets on or shuts off the
fall of the grain through the tubular orifice at the bottom
is operated by steam.

There are twelve of these hoppers. Sticking up through the
floor underneath •each one gape the flaring mouths of twelve
spouts or sluices, all of which point directly at the gate
in the hopper, as though ¦earnestly begging its bounty of
grain. Every one of these 144 spouts leads into a bin, near
or distant, and all are numbered, so that the superintendent
knows which spout conducts to any one bin, and can
distribute his cargoes accordingly, the result of his choice
being recorded in cabalistic abbreviations upon a blackboard
close by. A movable conductor is swung into place between
the hopper and the spout, the gate pulled open, and down
slides the wheat, with a musically rushing noise, into the
grateful bin.

To see the bins we descend again, this time reaching the top
of the wide part of the building. We walk very
circumspectly, in the half-light, amid a maze of beams,
stringers, and cross-pieces of wood and iron. The whole
interior of the elevator below this level is now seen to
consist of a series of rooms, between which there is no
communication. They are ceilingless, and the only exit from
them is through a sprout bottom. Peering over the edges from
the narrow foot-walks, we can only guess how far the person
would fall who should lose his balance, for the eye can not
reach the bottom: it is sixty-five feet below, and hidden in
darkness. Of these deep bins there are 144, some twice the
size of others. Sometimes they are all full at once, and
hold eight or nine hundred thousand bushels, weighing fifty
millions of pounds, and good for over two hundred thousand
barrels of flour.

Yet it was not until the winter of 1840 that the first cargo
of grain was ever shipped from this port, and it required
the whole winter to accumulate 4000 bushels. Forty years
have passed, and there are now in Milwaukee no less than
nine elevators, which have a storage capacity varying from-
200,000 to 1,000,000 bushels each, the total capacity being
5,330,000 bushels. They can ship over a million bushels a
day, but can take in only about half as much, the grain
requiring twice the time and trouble to go up as it does to
come down. Every available foot of storage space, I am told,
was required last winter (1879-80) to accommodate the
business here, and then there was not room enough.

What is the reason for this large and steady growth against
the powerful competition of a great neighbor? It is found in
the fact that Milwaukee wheat has from the first been
subjected to the most rigorous and honest inspection, and
the grade No. 1, or No. 2, or any other grade marked as
such, is known in Liverpool or Mark Lane to be precisely
what it is stamped. So trustworthy is this brand and
reputation that Milwaukee's wheat, derived from just the
same fields as Chicago's or Duluth's, will fetch one or two
cents more a bushel every time.

These elevators are almost all owned by railway companies,
and constitute an important element in their power
throughout the Northwest, while at the same time they are a
source of great strength to the city in its race with
competitors, since the railway lines strive to direct all
the grain trade to Milwaukee, cutting out Chicago and other
rivals.

The greatest of all these railways, whose existence is so
vital to the city, is the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul,
which owns enough miles of track to make a road— side tracks
and all—from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Its lines ramify
through the whole Northwest, and are to be " produced" (as
we say in geometry all over the Northern Plains from the
Black Hills to Athabasca Lake Feeding this artery to supply
the Milwaukee elevators are the Northern Pacific, the
railway from Manitoba, the lines which enter St. Paul and
Minneapolis from Dakota, Nebraska, and Northern Iowa, the
various other railways coming eastward through Southern
Wisconsin. In addition to this, the great Chicago and
Northwestern company send a powerful branch here, and help
to make Milwaukee a point intermediate between Eastern and
Western traffic. Over the West Wisconsin road come the
staples from the Chippewa, Eau Claire, and St. Croix
regions. Three routes lead to Green Bay and the northern
part of the State. The Wisconsin Central now extends a clear
line from Milwaukee to Ashland, Lake Superior, running
almost directly through the centre of the State, and opening
up a country rich in prospects. At present it is chiefly
useful as a lumber road, but settlement upon its abundant
lands is proceeding rapidly, and when the proposed
connecting link between it and the Northern Pacific at
Duluth is made, it will become a second channel through
which the wheat of the Upper Missouri prairies can flow into
Milwaukee's granaries. Several shorter lines have lately
been, opened, contributing to the city's prosperity; and a
route, no doubt some day to be built, is projected as an
air-line road to St. Louis, which shall take in great coal-
fields on its way. Such a road might be an important
accession to the manufacturing interests, in reducing the
cost of fuel, which is now brought from the soft-coal fields
of Iowa, and from the anthracite mines in more distant
Pennsylvania.

These railways and the steam-ship lines, this export of
wheat and lumber and farm produce, and import of rural
supplies, have produced a city of solidity and magnificence,
which you may go far and not find equalled, Its broad,
Nicholson-paved business streets are bounded for block after
block with warehouses and offices that would do credit to
New York; and there is probably no finer building in the
Northwest, devoted to a similar purpose, than the new hall
of the Chamber of Commerce. Limestone from home quarries and
gray Ohio sandstone are much used in construction, and
ornamental iron fronts are common, but the customary
building mate- £ rial is a brick which burns yellowish-white
instead of red, the clay lacking the iron which by oxidation
under heat gives the ferruginous tint. There are only one or
two buildings in the lower part of the city constructed of
red bricks, but their handsome effect is being copied
somewhat by painting. Taking-each building separately, one
can not altogether admire the taste which seems to have
dictated them (and the same may be said of the more
ostentatious residences in many cases), yet the general
effect is undeniably fine.

As for public buildings, they are not many nor prominent.
The County Courthouse is a handsome, dome-crowned structure
of Lake Superior brown stone ensconced in trees and
shrubbery; the Post-office is a commodious building, which
looks as if it was carved out of cheese, and makes you blink
for its whiteness; churches are hidden away among foliage
and houses until you can't see any one of them very
distinctly, except the two vast towers of the Cathedral on
the south side; and the beautiful tower of the water-works
remains about the only really ornamental public edifice in a
city where nothing is disgraceful except its market, and
that is being rebuilt.

Milwaukee is certainly handsome, business-like, and healthy.
It has about it an air of cleanliness, morally and
physically, and an appearance of thrifty activity remarkable
in contrast with the slatternly look of many large Eastern
and Southern towns. All these things serve to make it a "
Cream City,;' not in general tint alone, but creme de la
creme among its prosperous sister towns in the Northwest.
Yet it is difficult to pick out any one feature, and say of
it, that is characteristic and peculiar, something whereby a
person might know the city if he saw it in a vision, or was
mysteriously landed in its midst, apart from all other
towns. Boston has its round "swell fronts" and antique
streets, Philadelphia its marble steps and solid shutters,
and so on; but Milwaukee has little that is peculiar, unless
it be the universality of yellowish-white bricks, which is
shared by nearly all the towns between Lake Huron and the
Upper Mississippi.

Nor is it strange that it should he difficult to find
special peculiarities in so composite and so young a town. I
have tried again and again in Chicago, Detroit, St. Paul,
Burlington, and other Western cities to find a type of face
or a style of .carriage different from New York or New
England, hut found it impossible to do so. In a hundred
years the case may be different. Now, these men and women
are New York and New England transplanted; two-thirds of
them, were born in the East. They have brought with them the
mingled customs of all the Atlantic centres of civilization,
and have fitted them together to suit the new exigencies of
the Northwest. Even the rural population are not as gawky
and rustic as you will find in any back county of the East.
They have travelled somewhat, and seen strangers. Their eyes
are opened, and their attention alert. As for the long-
haired plainsmen, and 'coon-skin-capped hunters, and other
mythical characters of the "West," of course you see no more
of them, nor as many, as you may find on a bright day in the
Bowery. The only bit of "character" I can think of to be
found anywhere in the city or surroundings are the few lazy
old wood-sawyers who sit astride of their saw - bucks on the
comfortable side of the City Hall, and take long naps or
spin yarns while waiting- for a job. But even these old
fossils are not different from the working classes all over
the country; and the same is true of every grade of society.
You continually see countenances familiar to you, feel an
impulse to rush forward and claim an old acquaintance on
every other corner. One house or shop front shows a
tradition of Pennsylvania, another suggests some Broadway
idea, a third adopts a peculiar bit of Bostonianism, while a
fourth imitates a prominent sign-board in New Orleans. How
is a chronicler to recognize anything as yet grown out of
this composite, cosmopolitan growth, occurring similarly in
a dozen cities, to characterize any one ? Possibly in.
another century the evolution of circumstances will bring
out some specialty in each whereby their divergence can be
perceived.

Perhaps, nevertheless, in the case of Milwaukee, a
distinguishing feature may be found in the large grounds
that surround nearly all of the private residences in the
finer parts of the city. For a town of so large a population
this matter of space is accomplished in a way quite
surprising to an Eastern man. Several of the residences,
even in the heart of the town, occupy a whole block, or half
a block, and horticulture finds many enthusiastic votaries.
As a consequence, double houses and solid blocks of houses
flush with the sidewalk are very few. This is partly because
general sentiment is averse to it, but chiefly because a man
who can afford to rent in such a block will prefer to find
means to build for himself. Milwaukee is a city of homes;
its people own the houses and lots where they live, to an
extraordinary extent; and this is true from highest to
lowest—as well down below Wisconsin Street, and "over the
Rhine," as up on the bluffs that overlook the azure lake.
The architecture of the whole city, also, business and
residence portions alike, is pleasantly varied. This gives
the streets down town an animated look, and up town lends
that village air to the well-shaded avenues which always
seems doubly delightful when combined with such evidently
urban advantages as good pavements and faucet water, gas and
municipal protection. Just what styles of architecture
prevail it would be difficult to say. The big Grecian house,
with pillars in front from porch to cornice, the square-
topped, fortlike brick, the pretentiously cheap Mansard-
roof, are all absent, as is also the gambrel-roofed moss-
grown home so quaintly attractive in the suburbs of most New
England towns, and which, of course, no one would expect to
see here.

A half-Dutch, half-English cottage style of house, with no
end of peaks, gables, and surprising little points and
angles, is the universal thing, and nine out of ten of these
houses that succeed one another for miles and miles of
prettiness are painted slate-color. But though the houses
are not plain, the town owes its beauty not so much to
ornamental architecture, which has generally too .much of
the "gingerbread" look about it to please a severe taste, as
to the abundance of shade trees everywhere, and to the care
which is taken of the grounds. In many of the streets, also,
a wide space of sharply curbed and well-trimmed lawn
separates the roadway from the sidewalk, and often you may
go block after block without finding a fence between you and
the slightly elevated or terraced door-yards, whose shaven
greensward runs continuously past a dozen houses with no
boundary wall to interrupt. Particularly is this true of
Grand Avenue—a worthy rival of far-famed Euclid Avenue in
Cleveland. This gives one the idea that he is making his way
through a park rather than along a public street. Another
pleasant custom is that of placing an ornamental gateway and
rounding steps at the corner, where a house stands at the
intersection of two streets, giving a far more imposing
effect than one would imagine.

Until very lately a prejudice has existed quite unfounded, I
think—against living on the bluffs that overlook the
northern half of the bay; the city consequently grew
southward into the marshes, and westward up the slopes
between the Menomonee and Milwaukee rivers, leaving its
northern side open. Five years ago, Prospect Street was a
grass-grown, muddy lane. Now it is one of the very finest
avenues in town, and the backs of all the house lots on its
eastern side run to the brow of the lofty bluff, at whose
feet the restless lake is always beating. Down toward the
foot of this handsome street another branched off at an
acute angle, and the property owners about there bought and
set apart the triangle inclosed little park, which is now
very pretty. They constructed a fountain like a pile of
rocks there, on condition that the city should always keep
it running, wherein they made a good bargain. The
peculiarity and excellence of this fountain is that there is
plenty of water in it—rushing' streams having force and
weight dash out with a terraced door-yards, whose shaven
greensward runs continuously past a dozen houses with no
boundary wall to interrupt. Particularly is this true of
Grand Avenue—a worthy rival of far-famed Euclid Avenue in
Cleveland. This gives one the idea that he is making his way
through a park rather than along a public street. Another
pleasant custom is that of placing an ornamental gateway and
rounding steps at the corner, where a house stands at the
intersection of two streets, giving a far more imposing
effect than one would imagine. Until very lately a prejudice
has existed—quite unfounded, I think—against living on the
bluffs that overlook the northern half of the bay; the city
consequently grew southward into the marshes, and westward
up the slopes between the Menomonee and Milwaukee rivers,
leaving its northern side open. Five years ago, Prospect
Street was a grass-grown, muddy lane. Now it is one of the
very finest avenues in town, and the backs of all the house
lots on its eastern side run to the brow of the lofty bluff,
at whose feet the restless lake is always beating. Down
toward the foot of this handsome street another branched off
at an acute angle, and the property owners about there
bought and set apart the triangle inclosed as a little park,
which is now very pretty. They constructed a fountain like a
pile of rocks there, on condition that the city should
always keep it running, wherein they made a good bargain.
The peculiarity and excellence of this fountain is that
there is plenty of water in it—rushing streams having force
and weight dash out with a noise and wetness thoroughly
refreshing, whereas in the majority of fountains a few
tender trickling drops only keep the iron-work glossy, and
distress one with an idea that the affair is just on the
point of drying up. This is much the case with that handsome
structure, intended as a fountain, that ornaments the park
of the Court-house.

The pavement runs out Prospect Street for more than a mile,
and continues into a favorite drive for five miles, with a
side track kept in order for equestrians; and it was out
this road that the Veteran Soldiers camped at their late
reunion, and the beer gardens there did then—and yet do—a
very thriving business. Five miles from the Post-office
brings one to White-fish Bay, and a magnificent view of Lake
Michigan beating upon her cliffs just as the salt ocean
worries the headlands of Montauk or Navesink.

This is out of town, though, and one need not go so far to
watch the beauty or fury of the capricious lake. At the foot
of Prospect Street the bluff has been terraced and sodded
for a long distance, and so converted into a sort of
boulevard or esplanade, where you may loiter and enjoy the
fresh air. From this charming spot the bay is spread before
you in a vast semicircle, sweeping from Mnmewawa, the north
point, to Nojoshing, its southern terminus, five miles
distant, and leading the eye in front to aboundless horizon.
No ocean picture can be broader or more majestic; it may
give the beholder a more impressive feeling of terrible
power, but never will it show the varying and delicate
touches of beauty that the sparkling light waters and the
brilliant sunshine combine to paint upon the surface of Lake
Michigan. The swift and shifting changes the clouds work in
the dissolving tints of blue and green ; the sudden way in
which silver and gold and the scarlet or rosy reflections of
gaudy clouds are thrown down—all this is beyond pen or space
to describe, higher than pencil or brush can truly depict.
The lake, indeed, is the great fact which confronts you
everywhere in Milwaukee. Its azure mass rises as a wall to
confront the view whenever you turn your face to the
eastward, filling with deep blue the arch under the trees at
the end of every cross street.

Having this lake always before their eyes, and ever
supplying pure and fresh breezes, and having streets so
broad and well shaded, with such an abundance of pleasant
gardens just across the low fence, wherein your eyes may
feast to your heart's content, Milwaukee hardly needs a
park. Nevertheless, just out of the city, to the westward,
are the handsome grounds of the Soldiers' Home.

This institution is one of the four or five provided by the
United States government as asylums for men in distress who
have served creditably as volunteer soldiers in the Union
army. They could not desire a more comfortable or pleasanter
home. It is interesting to saunter through the commodious
and orderly building; to see how every office of the
household, from that of night-watchman to that of scullion,
is performed by men, and so well that a woman-hater would
hug himself for joy. The inmates all wear the army blue, and
spend their time wholly in a well-earned dolce far niente.
It is enjoyable to watch the groups of grizzled veterans,
with their pipes and cards, in the smoking-room, or listen
to their stories of the old days as they lie at full length
under the trees, and gaze across the hazy, purple city to
the far sun-lit lake beyond, in delicious and dreamy
contrast to their former activities and hardships. As the
city extends itself, this charming domain will ultimately be
its real park, no doubt, for the Soldiers' Home will find
itself utterly without tenants before many more years. The
deaths are very rapid now, and every year more and more of
these aged and scarred veterans, who are now beginning to
feel how the war shortened their lives by drawing too
heavily on their youthful energies, strike their tents in
this world, and go into that great campaign of the hereafter
whither every man marches under sealed orders.

I have said that the lake was the "one great fact" about
Milwaukee. The other great fact in Milwaukee is lager-beer.
Probably the city is more widely known for this than for
anything else. Her breweries ship their delectable product
to all parts of the world, and have won compliments for its
excellence even in the historic gardens of Bavaria. The beer
business is a rapidly growing one, also, as the statistics
of the Chamber of Commerce show, for it ' is less than
thirty years since the first shipment was sent to tempt the
willing appetites of New-Yorkers. In 1865 only about 65,000
barrels were manufactured in the whole city, and this was
regarded as a large amount. Now there are a score of
breweries, and for the year 1879 the records of the
collector of internal revenue show a total of 548,770
barrels of beer sold by the brewers of Milwaukee, showing an
increase within a year of 122,430 barrels. In making this
amount of beer the brewers of Milwaukee used 1,234,632
bushels of barley, equivalent to 1,509,017 bushels of malt,
and 1,097,540 pounds of hops, and realized for the product,
at the wholesale price, the sum of $4,938,930. Still they
find it necessary to continue enlarging their facilities, so
widespread has become the demand for this favorite beverage.
The barley is gathered from the entire Northwest, and even
from California.

The beer is made from very carefully selected materials, and
by men of the most approved experience in brewing. Extreme
care is taken in every detail of the work from beginning to
end, and finally, no beer is allowed to leave the cellars
until it is at least five months old; whereas many brewers,
particularly in the East, sell their product only three or
four months after it is made. It has been asserted that
there is a difference in the water, or the air, or some
other natural circumstance , which makes beer west of the
Alleghanies superior to that manufactured on the Eastern
slope; but Milwaukee men say this is erroneous, and that it
is all a question of better knowledge and extraordinary
caution in respect to all parts of the brewing process, and
the age which the beverage is permitted to attain before it
is sold.

No doubt the success of Milwaukee lager is a result of the
demand for very good beer which has arisen from the fact
that this community contains so many Germans who are both
judges and lovers of beer. Out of the 116,000 people in the
city, over 60,000 are of that nationality. It is said that
in the Second Ward, the northwestern corner of the town,
there is not a single American, French, or Irish family.
Whether this is so or not, it is certain one sees none but
German faces, reads German signs, hears Teutonic speech, and
catches all the flavor of the Father-land underneath an
unmistakably American crust. Any one can understand what is
meant by this last phrase if he goes to the railway station
and marks the appearance of the crowds of immigrants that
daily pour in there, fresh from the voyage. Then let him
take a Walnut Street car, and ride through the west side.
The faces are the same; the dress is only slightly
different; but there is an entire change, hard to define, in
the sentiment of all that the late immigrant says and does.

There being so many Germans and so much good beer, those
out-door pleasure parks so dear to the German mind are in
great number and handsomely appointed. Milwaukee quite
emulates Cincinnati in this respect. They are pretty places,
being laid out with well-shaded walks, parterres of flowers,
rustic colonnades, rock-work, fountains, and all the other
accessories of landscape gardening on a miniature scale.
There are also bowling-alleys and billiard saloons attached,
and in the middle stands a concert hall, where a band
discourses music to the crowd. Two of the largest of these
gardens are on the high ground over in the Second Ward, but
the majority of them are up the river, "where a little
steamer runs, and plenty of row-boats are handy for
pleasuring. When there is a set programme, and good music
may be expected, a very respectable crowd of both Germans
and Americans will be found gathered at the gardens.


Additional Comments:
Ingersoll, Ernest. "Milwaukee". Harper's New Monthly
Magazine. Volume 62, Issue 371 April 1881 : 702-718.



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