The corner of Wisconsin Avenue and Milwaukee Street was the site of the Post Office in the late 1800s. This building at 324 E. Wisconsin Ave. was the first government-erected building to house the post office and federal courts. Daniel Wells, a Wisconsin congressman, obtained funds for the land and construction of the building in 1856. When plans were made for a new federal building at 517 E. Wisconsin Ave., Wells bought the old building and rented it to the post office until the new building was completed in 1898. Then he had this building razed and built the Wells Building on the site in 1902. Photograph and information from the Milwaukee Public Library local history collection.

If you glanced northward along the Milwaukee river from the Wisconsin st. bridge in the first decade of the century, this is the view which greeted you between Wisconsin and Mason sts. - the back doors of some of the city’s prominent business establishments gracing E. Water st. (now N. Water). The J.C. Iversen Co. advertised its picture frames, looking glasses, and cabinet hardware. Julius Lando, a Milwaukee optician, greeted patients in his office at 419 E. Water. “We can plate anything” was the claim of Adolph Werner, silversmith, 415 E. Water. In the same building was the office of the Milwaukee Gunning System, offering not 45s, but bulletin, wall and commercial signs. Right next door, Joseph Foertsch operated a saloon and restaurant, the Olympic Sample Room. Herman Gaulke & Co., tailors, provided Milwaukeeans with the latest in fashions from a shop at 421 E. Water. At the foot of Mason st. Benjamin Mock had a livery stable, where customers could rent or purchase horse drawn conveyances. Although they were not located in the area, other Milwaukee firms made use of riverfront advertising—Boston Store and Goodman’s Great Bargain Center, located at the northwest corner of 4th and Grand, the present site of Penney’s, where Milwaukeeans could purchase dry goods, clothing, shoes, furniture and groceries. (Picture courtesy of Carl Remeeus, 2742 N. Hackett av., and information from the local history collection of the Milwaukee public library.)

The magnificent Mitchell home at 183 9th St. (now 900 W. Wisconsin Ave.) has long been a center of Milwaukee social life. Mitchell, an early Milwaukee industrial and financial giant, built his original home on the site in 1848, the year Wisconsin became a state. The mansion pictured was built in 1870 and was designed for Mitchell by architect E. Townsend Mix. It became a center for whatever was splendidly formal in Milwaukee social life. After Mitchell’s death in 1887, the home stood vacant for a time. Then a social and literary club, the Deutscher Club, acquired the home in 1898 and used it as a permanent clubhouse. The club built a ballroom where the palm house and conservatory had been and, with such a fine facility, began to take a more active part in Milwaukee’s social affairs. Shortly after buying the home, the club sponsored the first “Bachelor’s Ball.” Many prominent people visiting the city were entertained at the Deutscher Club - Prince Heinrich of Prussia, Presidents William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt, and famous opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink. During World War I, in deference to anti-German feeling, members changed the club’s name to “Wisconsin Club.” (Photograph and information from the Milwaukee Public Library local history collection.)

One of Milwaukee’s present landmarks, the Schroeder hotel, had not yet been built when this picture was taken in 1922. The hotel didn’t make the city directory until 1927. The Wisconsin theater (note the vacant lot on the left) materialized two years later (1924) as “Milwaukee’s newest monument to civic progress.” The Palace theater (note lower part of marquee on right) was already in business, as was the Strand, which at the time of this picture was showing the film “Strongheart Brawn of the North” and featured a novelty jazz band every week. There were no stop and go lights on the corner, but there was a traffic policeman-and have a look at those cars! (Picture from the local history collection, Milwaukee public library.)

The Bijou Opera House, on Second St. between Wisconsin Ave. and Michigan St., was the home of melodrama in Milwaukee at the turn of the century. The theater was part of a chain owned by Jacob Litt. According to one Milwaukee history, this impresario believed that those who visited and those who lived in Milwaukee “expect more or less in the line of amusements,” and so he aimed to provide for every level of interest. Besides the Bijou, Litt operated the Academy of Music and the Dime Museum, which contained curiosities such as “Dr. Casanovia, Who Cuts Up a Man Before the Audience.” The Bijou, which opened in 1891, featured shows where the hero saved the heroine, and the villain was hissed and booed. During State Fair Week, the annual show was “In Old Kentucky.” The theater closed in 1912. Photograph and information from the Milwaukee Public Library local history collection.

This picture was taken of the flag bedecked Wisconsin National Bank, on the northwest corner of what is now N. Water St. and E. Wisconsin Ave., during the second Milwaukee Carnival in 1899. The first one had been held the year before to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Wisconsin’s statehood. The first carnival was so successful, according to a newspaper story, that there was a general demand for a repetition of it. The second - held in June, 1899 - was described in this not so modest way by a newspaper: “The Carnival is a unique institution. It is not organized for the purpose of bleeding a gullible public. It is organized purely and simply to give the people a good time. It is Milwaukee’s contribution to the amusement of the world.” The day this picture was taken, June 28, events included a floral parade with 75 decorated carriages reviewed by Theodore Roosevelt, then governor of New York. There were also masked parades, concerts and a boxing tournament. Besides being a summer outing that attracted more than 100,000 visitors, the carnival provided a great way to laud Milwaukee as a good place to live and work. Photograph and information provided by the Milwaukee Public Library local history collection.

The year 1929 may have been the “crash” one, but it looked for all the world like business as usual in downtown Milwaukee, looking east on Wisconsin Ave. from N. 3rd St. From the looks of the cars lined up here bumper to bumper, transportation ills were nothing new to Milwaukee. That year saw the release of a “daring and fantastic” comprehensive plan for a futuristic transport center covering more than15 blocks of the lower third ward, and combining all the transportation facilities of Milwaukee. It included a 4,000 by 2,000 foot elevated airfield resting at piers at a lakefront harbor terminal. Planes would land on the field, descend on ramps and discharge passengers at street level, according to the plan. Beneath the airfield would have been railroad tracks, sheds and a station; shops, gasoline stations and bus and trolley stations. Some of the smoke from the locomotives would curl through a smoke pot in the center of the field to serve as a wind indicator. The project included a large municipal parking area. But 1929, the year of such a grandiose plan, was indeed the year of the stock market collapse. That ended the enthusiasm and all possibilities of financing the project. (Photograph and information provided by the Milwaukee Public Library local history collection.)

The history of Milwaukee’s Chamber of Commerce goes back to 1858 when the Board of Trade and the Corn Exchange, which had functioned independently, combined into the Chamber of Commerce of the City of Milwaukee. The new chamber, with 99 members, met in a building on the present site of Gimbels’ W. Wisconsin Ave. store. In February, 1863, the chamber moved to a building on the southwest corner of E. Michigan St. and N. Broadway. There it conducted business until 1880, when the Chamber of Commerce Building shown here was built by Alexander Mitchell. The new building had the first grain pit ever constructed - an octagonal platform designed to facilitate trading. The pit was later copied by exchanges throughout the world. In 1931, the stock exchange department was opened. In 1935, the Chamber of Commerce, under a new name, Milwaukee Grain and Stock Exchange, moved to 741 N. Milwaukee St. Its old home was then remodeled and, in 1937, was renamed the Mackie building in honor of Mitchell Mackie, a grandnephew of Alexander Mitchell. Photograph and information from the Milwaukee Public Library local history collection.

This red brick building on the northeast corner of E. Michigan and N. Milwaukee Sts. once housed the offices of the Evening Wisconsin, a daily newspaper that had begun publication in 1847. Its first editor, William Cramer, was blind and almost totally deaf, so visitors to the Evening Wisconsin often heard the high voice of an editorial writer, John Gregory, reading to Cramer with the aid of a long speaking tube and ear trumpet. Gregory would scream out the morning’s news stories and every word of its editorials. He then listened and took notes while Cramer dictated his own daily editorial. Cramer died in 1905; his wife then edited the Wisconsin until 1918, when the paper was sold and combined with the Milwaukee Daily News and Milwaukee Free Press to form the Wisconsin News, which was discontinued in 1939. The 1879 building was razed around 1970. Now the site is a parking structure for T.A. Chapman’s. (Photo courtesy of Harold Weinholz and information from the Milwaukee Public Library.)

Gimbels, the department-store institution that now has been taken over by Marshall Field’s, started out modestly in Milwaukee. This picture, taken on Aug. 30, 1901, shows the original Gimbels Milwaukee store on the south side of Wisconsin Ave. (then 3 and 5 Grand Ave.) between Plankinton Ave. and the river. Construction had just begun next door on the first of several additions that together form the present huge structure. The Gimbel family - Adam, his six brothers and two sisters - began emigrating to the United States from Bavaria in 1835. Settling in New Orleans, Adam spent the next seven years visiting Mississippi River towns as an itinerant merchant. In 1842 he opened a dry goods emporium in Vincennes, Ind., which proved a great success. On Sept. 9, 1887, the eldest of Gimbel’s seven surviving sons, Jacob and Isaac, established Gimbel Brothers in Milwaukee, impressed by the “young developing city” and its “solid potential for growth.” The downtown Milwaukee store continued to expand, with additions built in 1914-‘15, 1919-'20 and 1923-'25.