Showing 321-340 of 683 Entries
Author: Justin Smith
Milwaukee’s Marcus Corporation has its roots in Ripon, Wisconsin where Polish immigrant Ben Marcus (originally Machtey) bought and refurbished the shell of a burned out department store with a $30,000 loan in 1935. He eventually grew the business into one of the largest cinema enterprises in the United States. Marcus arrived in the United States…
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Author: Ruben L. Anthony, Jr.
The Marquette Interchange is the linchpin of the Milwaukee area freeway system. It is the heart of Wisconsin’s transportation system and the backbone for distributing people and commerce throughout the state. It is estimated that 50 percent of the state’s residents and 60 percent of its major industries use the Milwaukee area freeways. Wisconsin’s major…
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Author: Thomas J. Jablonsky
John Martin Henni, the first Catholic bishop of Milwaukee, came to his adopted city in 1843 with several ambitions. Among them, he wanted to open a college. The biggest difficulty with this part of his plan was the absence of an intellectual culture in Milwaukee conducive to such an enterprise. The village—Milwaukee was not even…
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Author: Jenna Jacobs
Founded in 1847, Marshall & Ilsley Bank, or M&I, was Milwaukee’s oldest and largest bank before being acquired by Toronto-based BMO Harris Bank in 2011. At the time of acquisition, M&I had $49.6 billion in assets, making it the largest Wisconsin-based bank. From headquarters at 770 North Water Street, the bank employed 9,100 people, nearly…
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Author: William I. Tchakirides
Mary Blanchard Lynde (circa 1820-1897) moved from upstate New York to Milwaukee with her husband, William Pitt Lynde, in 1841, a few weeks after their marriage and about a year after her graduation as valedictorian from the Albany Female Academy. In addition to raising seven children with William, a successful politician and founding partner in…
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Author: Sean O’Farrell
Mary Louise Nohl was one of the most important local artists in Milwaukee’s history. Nohl was born in Milwaukee on September 6, 1914, to Leo and Emma Nohl. She showed her creativity from an early age by building small structures with discarded materials—including old toys and clothes—that other people considered junk. She also participated in…
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Author: Karen W. Moore
According to transit historian Zachary Schrag, mass transit “generally refers to scheduled intra-city service on a fixed route in shared vehicles.” Since 1860, opposing political and economic forces significantly shaped the provision of transit in the Milwaukee metropolitan region. These forces included changes in available and economically viable technologies, advocates for public versus private ownership,…
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Author: Jenna Jacobs
Headquartered in Oak Creek, Master Lock Company, LLC, is a subsidiary of Illinois-based Fortune Brands Home and Security, Inc. The Master Lock Company, including its Master Lock, American Lock, and SentrySafe brands, had net sales of $552 million in 2015. At its height in the 1980s and 1990s, Master Lock employed 1,300 workers at its…
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Author: Ellen Engseth
Mathilde Franziska Giesler Anneke was an internationally known educator, women’s rights advocate, journalist and publisher, poet, author, and arts critic who immigrated to Milwaukee in 1850. Over her life in the city she became involved in major liberal political battles of her day, and in her later years she ran a renowned women’s school in…
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Author: Joseph B. Walzer
Although now much smaller in scale, meatpacking was one of Milwaukee’s leading industries through much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the most prominent form of food processing in the city. The industry and city grew together as firms slaughtered, processed, and packaged livestock—particularly hogs and cattle—from hinterland farms, distributing products for regional, national,…
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Author: Alexander Belovsky
The Medical College of Wisconsin has its origins in private, for-profit Milwaukee medical colleges that opened in the late 1800s. One of these enterprises, the Milwaukee Medical College, became affiliated (educationally, though not financially) with Marquette College in 1907. Five years later, a group of local physicians urged the University to strengthen its oversight and…
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Author: James Marten
Milwaukee’s history is layered into its residents’ everyday lives. They commute to work on streets named for long-gone pioneer roads—Watertown Plank Road, to name one—or noted places or people, like National Avenue, named for the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers (the old home for Civil War soldiers established in 1867 that looms over the…
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Author: Christopher De Sousa
The 1,200-acre Menomonee Valley has always played a central role in the economic life of Milwaukee. Flowing through it is the Menomonee River, which provided Native Americans with a canoe route from Lake Michigan into the interior and abundant resources, including menomin (Algonquin for wild rice). As European settlement increased in the late 1800s, the…
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Author: James K. Nelsen
The Merrill Park neighborhood is in the City of Milwaukee between Wisconsin Avenue, Interstate 94, from 27th Street, and 39th Street. It is south of the CONCORDIA neighborhood and east of PIGGSVILLE. Together, the three neighborhoods make up the “West End,” so named because in the late nineteenth century it was at the west end…
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Author: Michele Saltzman
The Village of Merton is located about 25 miles northwest of Milwaukee in WAUKESHA COUNTY, bordering the Towns of Merton and LISBON. Before European settlers arrived there, Native Americans had an encampment in the area, along with a system of trails—one of which European immigrants traveled on their way through the Wisconsin territory. In 1840,…
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Author: Brian Mueller
Meta Schlichting Berger won election to the Milwaukee school board in 1909, seven years after women could vote in such an election, and a decade before women earned the right to vote in the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Berger remained on the school board for another 30 years. In this and other prominent public…
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Author: Jenna Jacobs
Since the 1830s, Methodists have been worshipping in Milwaukee. This faith tradition encompasses a variety of denominations, including many congregations that have traditionally served particular ethnic, racial, and linguistic groups. Some of these denominations exist today, including many historically black churches, while others have merged into larger communions. The largest Methodist denomination in the nation…
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Author: Gregory D. Squires
The Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council (MMFHC) promotes fair housing and creation of racially integrated communities in the Milwaukee metropolitan area and throughout Wisconsin. Fair housing refers to the opportunity to secure housing and housing-related services such as mortgage loans and home insurance free from discrimination based on race and other protected classes that several…
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Author: Thomas J. Jablonsky
“Metropolitanization” can reference a perception, a behavior, or a process. As one moves north, south, or west from the central business district (CBD) of Milwaukee, a seemingly endless landscape of shopping malls and housing districts provides an “urban” definition to what we are seeing, until one reaches less developed areas in Ozaukee, Racine, and western…
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Author: Antonio Guajardo
Mexican Fiesta is a three day celebration of Mexican and Hispanic culture held on the third weekend of August at the Milwaukee Summerfest Grounds. Mexican Fiesta was originally organized in 1973 by LULAC Council #9990 as a street festival to celebrate Mexican Independence and raise money for Latino students pursuing a college education. In 1977…
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