Showing 481-500 of 683 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: Kim Tschudy
Milwaukee’s first railroad, the Milwaukee and Waukesha Railroad, formed in 1847. It became operational in 1850, when the first tracks were laid to Elm Grove, Wisconsin, and reached Waukesha in 1851. Their first station, located at Second Street and St. Paul Avenue, near the current Amtrak station, was a small, two-room, building of a utilitarian,…
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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: Joseph B. Walzer
Humans have fished Milwaukee area lakes and rivers for centuries. Natives, fur traders, and early settlers subsisted in part on the fish they caught in these waters. While the commercial fishing industry reduced the need for Milwaukeeans to fish for their survival by the 1860s, many residents continued the practice to maintain a connection to…
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Author: Jenna Jacobs
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: Lois Quinn
Throughout its history Milwaukee has seen shifting and complex interplays among local, state, and federal government policies regarding support provided to needy families through work relief and financial aid welfare payments. Three periods in the last century highlight competing theories about work relief and welfare support that operated in Milwaukee. In the Great Depression years…
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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 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 international…
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Author: Sean O’Farrell
Noted Milwaukee artist Richard Lorenz was born in 1858 in Voigtstedt, Germany. He began to study art at a young age as a student of prominent German artist Theodor Hagen. In 1886, shortly after winning the Carl Alexander prize, Lorenz was hired by William Wehner to work for Wehner’s American Panorama Company in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.…
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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: Michael Pulido
From 1900 through the 1940s, Milwaukee’s well-to-do often laced up their roller skates for an evening of “fashionable amusement” at the local skating rinks, most notably the Riverview and the Palomar. The former, overlooking the Milwaukee River on North Avenue, offered ladies’ instruction in both plain and fancy skating in the afternoon and hosted the…
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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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