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Growing Power, Inc. was a Milwaukee farm and non-profit organization that modeled 21st century urban agriculture. It was part farm, part idea factory. It earned international acclaim with founder and CEO Will Allen’s “Good Food Revolution.” Through Allen’s respected community food security leadership, Growing Power shaped the national conversation about urban agriculture and food justice… Read More

The Village of Hales Corners possessed a strong identity from 1836, when the first white settlers arrived, but it did not attain legal independence until 1952. The area that is today Hales Corners was initially part of the Town of Lake and then the Town of Kinnickinnic (renamed Greenfield in 1841), which included present day… Read More

Halyard Park is often referred to as a “suburb within a city.” Despite major changes to the physical landscape caused by freeway construction and urban renewal, Halyard Park is one of the longest-standing, black, middle-class, residential neighborhoods within BRONZEVILLE. It is located between Interstate 43, North Avenue, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, and Walnut… Read More

Milwaukee’s “Harambee” neighborhood is named from the Swahili meaning “pulling together.” The neighborhood is bounded by Interstate-43 to the west, Holton Street to the east, North Avenue to the south, and Keefe Avenue to the north. Its northern boundary is sometimes defined as Capitol Drive, which includes the Williamsburg Heights neighborhood. This entry uses the… Read More

Harley-Davidson is an international motorcycle manufacturing company with production facilities, certified dealers, and a museum all within the city of Milwaukee. Located at 37th Street and Juneau Avenue, Harley-Davidson’s corporate headquarters is not too far from the site of the first Harley-Davidson shop. In 1901, William Harley and Arthur Davidson, coworkers at a bicycle factory,… Read More

Opened in 2008, the Harley-Davidson Museum celebrates one of Milwaukee’s most famous businesses. Exhibits on the second floor chronicle the company’s rise from a two-person partnership to a multinational corporation, as well as its rich racing history. Displays on the ground floor emphasize the company’s influence on popular culture. The museum’s construction reflected a revitalization… Read More

Harold Breier (1911-1998) was Milwaukee’s chief of police from 1964 to 1984, one of the longest tenures of chiefs of Milwaukee’s police department. He joined the department in 1940 at the age of twenty-nine. In 1943, after a brief stint in patrol, he became an acting detective and subsequently rose through the detective ranks until… Read More

Harold R. Christoffel (1912-1991) was the chief organizer and first president of United Automobile Workers’ (UAW) Local 248 (at the Allis-Chalmers Manufacturing Company), the largest union in the state at the time. He also helped introduce the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to Milwaukee and was the first union leader indicted and jailed during the… Read More

Once a remote trading site along the Rubicon River inhabited by Potawatomi and Menominee peoples, Hartford has evolved over the past two centuries into a bustling center of industry, recreation, and civic engagement. The Town of Hartford was incorporated as the Town of Wright in 1846. The Village of Hartford incorporated in 1871 and became… Read More

The integrated health care systems that currently dominate health care provision in Milwaukee were created in the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first. Before the many mergers and acquisitions that formed them, health care was provided by many small independent providers. In 1988, there were twenty distinctive community… Read More

For the better part of the twentieth century, Heil was one of Milwaukee’s major industrial enterprises and contributed to the city’s growing reputation as the “machine shop of the world.” Like many Milwaukee firms, however, Heil relocated to America’s Sunbelt states following the economic turmoil of the 1970s and 1980s. Julius Heil, a German immigrant… Read More

  The Helene Zelazo Center is a UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MILWAUKEE (UWM) venue for performing arts. The building was dedicated in 1923 as the second home of Congregation Emanu El (which became CONGREGATION EMANU EL B’NE JESHURUN in 1927), a Jewish synagogue. The building was designed by Robert A. Messmer & Bros., a firm also responsible… Read More

Henry Louis “Hank” Aaron became one of Milwaukee’s first major sports icons when he helped lead the Milwaukee Braves to their only World Series championship in 1957. Born in Mobile, Alabama, on February 5, 1934, Aaron began his baseball career with the Mobile Black Bears, a semi-pro team, at the age of seventeen. After briefly… Read More

  Henry Clay Payne (November 23, 1843-October 4, 1904) played an instrumental role in Milwaukee’s late 19th century commercial and political development. Born in Massachusetts and rejected from military service, he moved to Milwaukee in his teens, working as a shop clerk and insurance salesman before entering politics. He led the Milwaukee Young Republicans and… Read More

Born on Milwaukee’s North Side in 1912, Reuss utilized his Harvard law degree locally before serving in Europe during World War Two. Afterwards, he turned his attention to electoral politics, enduring several unsuccessful city and state campaigns. In 1954, Reuss finally won Wisconsin’s Fifth Congressional seat. Achievements in his twenty-eight year House career included advocating… Read More

Henry W. Maier (1918-1994), Milwaukee’s longest serving mayor, led the city from 1960 to 1988. Born Henry Walter Nelke in Dayton, Ohio, Maier was raised by his maternal grandparents and moved to Milwaukee to join his mother and her second husband Charles Maier after high school. Taking his stepfather’s last name, Maier attended the University… Read More

When the Milwaukee Road inaugurated its new high speed Hiawatha trains in 1935, it created a nationally recognized brand. The railroad purchased streamlined steam locomotives from American Locomotive Company, built modern passenger cars in its Milwaukee Shops, and launched an award winning advertising campaign. Calling itself the Route of the Hiawathas, the railroad named their… Read More

Hillside is a neighborhood in the City of Milwaukee. It was named after World War II for the homes that were built literally on the hillside that forms the neighborhood. Its boundaries are traditionally defined as Walnut Street to the north, Fond du Lac Avenue/McKinley Avenue to the south, Interstate 43 to the west, and… Read More

Over 6,000 Hindus worshipped in the greater Milwaukee area in 2010. Thanks to increased immigration from India in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, Milwaukee’s Hindu community has rapidly expanded. While the Milwaukee Hindu community includes congregations of converts, the majority of the region’s Hindus are first or second generation immigrants from India. For… Read More

Like people all over the United States, by the late 1960s, Milwaukeeans were disillusioned with the continuous construction and expansion since World War II and were beginning to rediscover the value of older buildings. Historic Milwaukee, Inc., which is dedicated to education about and advocacy for the city’s architectural heritage, grew out of this movement… Read More