Lenck’s Hardware was men’s headquarters

Male bonding. That’s what the former C.H. Lenck & Bros. Hardware Store at 2499 S. Delaware Ave. was known for in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Old-timers would congregate and “tell stories and crack jokes, and bet on elections and their fast horses, and tell of their great deeds of valor and narrow escapes,” wrote Captain William Donahue in his memoir, Early Days.

The days of the old-timers around a potbelly stove, with a spittoon nearby, are pretty much past. Perhaps the neighborhood barbershop is the only place of business where such male camaraderie still transpires. The old Lenck hardware store is now the Delaware House, a place where people of all ages (and both sexes) congregate, not to “jaw,” but to dance, perform yoga, and engage in other health-related activities.

But at a ceremony Saturday, June 27, the former Lenck & Bros. will be remembered, when it is designated as a Bay View Historical Society Landmark. 

Store Was a Center

Owned by Charles H. and Henry F. Lenck from approximately 1874 to 1941, the hardware store at 2499 S. Delaware Ave. also dealt in sheet metal or tinwork.

Most of the “old-timers” who hung around Lenck’s belonged to the Republican Party, according to a 1933 Milwaukee Sentinel article. They were the “censors of the village on all affairs: economic, political, moral and spiritual. To lose the respect of the tin shop groups was to be taboo,” the Sentinel reported.

During Benjamin Harrison’s presidential campaign of 1889, the old-timers had a great cannon made at the rolling mill and dubbed it “Ben Harrison.” The cannon was stored at Lenck’s, and when Harrison won the election, it was dragged to the beach and fired once for each electoral vote Harrison won.

The hardware store was also the headquarters of the Company C, Bay View Light Artillery. Colonel Theobald Otjen, Captain William Donahoe, First Lieutenant Mike Richlie, and Second Lieutenant Henry Lenck headed the militia company. In 1886, during the eight-hour-day riot in Bay View, Company C was stationed along the lakefront to protect the mill from the protesters, according to Donahue. In March 1889, Company C marched in President Harrison’s inauguration parade.

The Man & Clan

Charles Lenck was involved in local politics. After Bay View was annexed by Milwaukee in 1887, Lenck served as Bay View’s 17th Ward alderman from 1888 to 1889. In 1893, Lenck served as assemblyman for the 13th District, which included the 17th Ward, Lake Township, Greenfield, and Franklin in Milwaukee County.

According to the 1850 census, Charles and Henry’s father, Frederick, also worked with tin, working as a “tinker” in Pennsylvania. As a tinker, Frederick Lenck traveled around mending metal household items. He and his wife Augusta had five children; the first four, including Charles, were born in Pennsylvania. Henry was born in Wisconsin in 1854.

In the early 1850s Frederick moved to Milwaukee and worked as a tinsmith from his home in the 300 block of S. Second Street (since razed). Sons Charles and Henry also worked as tinsmiths in the 1870s, with Charles working for L.J. Mueller on S. Second Street.

According to city directories, Charles moved to Bay View in 1874 and Henry in 1877; both were listed as tinsmiths, but the directories provided no address.

At that time, the building at 2499 S. Delaware Ave. was owned by the Milwaukee Iron Company. It was built in 1870 in the “boomtown” architectural style (see sidebar), and was used by the iron company to manufacture miner’s helmets that held lamps used by night workers in the steel mill.

In September 1886, Charles purchased the building from the iron company for $1,200. In all likelihood, Charles had leased the Delaware building from the iron company from 1874 to 1886.

Charles and his wife Catherine had two children. Catherine died at the age of 35 in 1886. At the time of her death, the family was living next to the store at 2495 S. Delaware Ave. (since razed). Henry and his wife Amelia had six children. They lived at 2522 S. Delaware Ave.

A building permit indicates that in 1899, the brothers expanded the store with a 20-by-40-foot addition built onto the front of the building.

Charles died in 1916 at the age of 67. Henry died in 1933 at the age of 79.

Henry’s son, Fred, continued the business after his father’s death until 1941. Fred Lenck had been working in the business since 1901. He lived nearby at 1625 E. Pryor Ave.

The Lenck building changed hands over the years. By 1941, Bay View Sheet Metal occupied the building. In 1998, the building housed The Cutting Table, a fabric store. In 2003 an addition was built to the north. In 2006, the Delaware House opened in the building, which houses a number of businesses involved in dance, yoga, physical therapy, acupuncture, massage, skincare, and personal training.

Metal Work: A Hazardous Occupation

Metal work could be a hazardous occupation. In 1890, the Milwaukee Sentinel reported, “While engaged in putting an iron roof on a south side building Henry Lenck, Fred Bearman, and another worker fell off a swinging scaffold. All three were seriously injured. Mr. Lenck was able to proceed home without assistance but the other two men had to be conveyed to their homes.”

Boomtown Architecture

The “boomtown” style of architecture was popular in the 1870s and tended to be used on commercial structures. Usually these structures were wooden and look liked the buildings of the Old West depicted in cowboy movies. The false front, which is taller than the roof, hides the roof when viewed from the front.

Source: Wisconsin Historical Society

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