Hidden History of Milwaukee

Posted by :Yance On : May 16, 2014
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Category: Milwaukee Talk, Uncategorized

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Join OnMilwaukee.com’s Bobby Tanzilo for a behind-the-scenes tour of Milwaukee’s past. Sail out to the Breakwater Lighthouse, scramble up the wings of the Milwaukee Art Museum and dig up the city’s roots on the corner of Water Street and Wisconsin Avenue. Seize the chance to do a little urban spelunking and explore basilicas, burial grounds and breweries. Ring the bell in the city hall tower, and take a turn around the secret indoor track at a Montessori school. No space is off limits in these untold stories of the Cream City’s most familiar places and celebrated landmarks.

This is Bobby Tanzilo’s latest book about Milwaukee’s history and it pulls together many of the stories he has told in his On Milwaukee columns. He will be on hand to talk about the book and answer questions.


Here is a recent interview from On Milwaukee.

Boswell Books
2559 N. Downer Ave.
Milwaukee, WI 53211
Wednesday May 21, at 7:00 pm

About the Author: Bobby Tanzilo is managing editor at OnMilwaukee.com. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he moved to Milwaukee when he was 17 and has lived in nearly every neighborhood in the city. He earned a BA-Mass Communication at UW-Milwaukee and is author of The Milwaukee Police Station Bomb of 1917, as well as three other nonfiction books. He lives in Milwaukee with his family, where he serves on the school governance council at his children’s Milwaukee Public School, and is creator of the website, SchoolMattersMKE.com.

Tanzilo

2014 ‘MONDO MILWAUKEE’ Boat Tours

Posted by :Yance On : May 15, 2014
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Category: Milwaukee Talk

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‘MONDO MILWAUKEE’ AFTER-HOURS BOAT TOUR RETURNS FOR SECOND SEASON

The Milwaukee Boat Line will offer a second season of the popular Mondo Milwaukee Boat Tour detailing the city’s scandalous and hidden past via the rivers and lake. This year’s first Mondo tour will be held Thursday, May 29th from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m., departing from 101 W. Michigan Street. Additional Mondo tours will be held on the last Thursday of each month: June 26, July 31, and August 28, also 8 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Hosted by local author and historian Matthew J. Prigge, the tour includes all-true stories about such off-beat topics as the old downtown vice and brothel districts, the deadliest disasters of the lake and rivers, the years when the Milwaukee mafia ruled the Third Ward, and long-forgotten mass graves on the city’s waterfront.

“Mondo Milwaukee gives a history of the city that is rarely told. It’s a great mix of bawdy tales, forgotten disasters, and wild stories that all helped to shape our city,” said Prigge. “It’s the only after-hours tour we’ve got in Milwaukee. Last year’s response to the tour was overwhelmingly positive. This year is going to be even more fun.”

Prigge is a PhD student in the history program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) and has spent the last three summers leading tours of the city for the Milwaukee Boat Line. His articles on Milwaukee’s history have been featured in several publications and have won awards from local and national organizations. He has written a book detailing some of the strangest and most savage forgotten events of Milwaukee’s past that will be published by the Wisconsin Historical Society Press in 2015.

A full bar and snacks will be available throughout the tour. Tickets cost $17.99 each. They can be purchased online at mkeboat.com/tickets or dockside the night of the tour. Visit facebook.com/mondomke for updates.

For more information, contact Matthew J. Prigge at 920-901-4866 or at mjprigge@uwm.edu.

boat

South KK Row-houses

Posted by :Yance On : May 12, 2014
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Category: Good Old Days

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I love old photos and the Library of Congress has a great collection of online images that can be searched. There is a series of Milwaukee pictures by veteran Life magazine photographer Carl Mydans taken in April 1936. I have looked at these photos many, many times and most of them show areas of town that have been struck by “urban renewal”. As a result, you have to take for granted that these older areas of the city are forever gone.

Several of the photos have labels and descriptions that I know are not right and don’t make sense from what I know. The following picture is one of those that have bugged me and it has a description of “View from living quarters at 730 West Winnebago Street”. That area of Winnebago Street across from the old Pabst Brewery is long demolished after the Park East Freeway was built in the late 1960s. I have the large size of the picture as my PC desktop background so I see it all of the time and it was a surprise when I was driving back from Bay View on KK a few weeks back that I glanced over and saw houses that looked like those in the photo. It was an “aha” moment and when I got home, I looked at Google Maps and sure enough, these were the houses I was looking for and they, for the most part, still exist but in the wrong location.

Mislabeled historic photos can be found in many places. There is another one on the Library of Congress website that was identified wrong here and is actually around 9th & Clybourn. Gary Rebholz of Milwaukee German Newspapers Index showed me a few pictures on the Milwaukee Public Library digital collection website that had erroneous descriptions. They have since been corrected.

So the moral of the story is don’t believe everything you read about where that old photo is from. Chances are that somebody screwed up. Keep your eyes open – history is all around you!

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The row-houses as they look today with a few that have been torn down:
Houses