Leading family’s estate still stands on Shore Drive

Storm of November 1913 with waves breaking against the shore directly below the bluff. Note the pavilion precipitously on the edge of the bluff in the background. ~photo courtesy John Ebersol

Leading family’s estate still stands

The lakeside Starkey home, with hood moldings over the windows, was built on lots of the P.M. Pryor subdivision, acquired by the Milwaukee Iron Company in 1874. In 1890, George Starkey bought the home from the company, then known as the Illinois Steel Company.

George had four children. That the Starkey home became a grand estate is due to the effort of one of them, Daniel B. Starkey (1862-1949).

Dan Starkey was fond of politics, parks, and publications—somewhat in that order (see sidebar). When he was just 19, Dan became an editor of the Bay View Herald newspaper. In 1882, he acquired the paper and in 1886 sold it to Beulah Brinton, who then ran it with her son Warren.

In 1893, Dan bought the lot to the south of his father’s home, which contained the old Pryor farm’s barn. Now with three lots, plus his income from both the steel mill where he was a foreman and from his newly published book (George Rogers Clark and His Illinois Campaign), Dan started developing the estate.

The Starkey Estate

First, major additions were made to the house. In 1897, the architectural firm of Ferry and Clas (who also designed Central Library) designed Dan’s library to the north and a solarium to the south.

Often neighborhood perch dinners, receptions, and parties were held in the pavilion during the summer. The board of directors of the South Shore Yacht Club met in the pavilion in the 1920s.

But the fate of the pavilion grew precarious, as it perched atop the bluff increasingly eroded and at the mercy of storms. The fall of 1913 saw a particularly severe storm that damaged equipment being used to build a seawall intended to protect the bluff. Hathoway Company’s equipment was damaged, but Edward E. Gillen Company finished the job, also extending the “bluff” eastward with iron slag fill from the nearby Thomas Furnace Company. The eventual completion of the seawall preserved Starkey’s pavilion, and other properties, and created the modern shore including the present-day yacht club parking lot and park and bike trail to the north.

What Remains

Though the Starkey pavilion and formal garden were removed in 1964 to allow for construction of a modern ranch-style home, much of Dan Starkey’s estate still exists behind the extant 2582 S. Shore Dr. home. Most of a spatter-dash-faced concrete wall survives, with concrete balusters and light poles extending for some 150 feet along the top of the bluff. The northern 50 feet of that wall extended off Starkey’s property onto land then occupied by descendents of the Pryors.

However, there was much more to the estate. A gravel drive completed a circuit around the house, connecting to the street (originally Erie Street, renamed Beulah Avenue, and today S. Shore Drive) to the north and south.

This gravel drive also descended below a concrete bridge heading east to a parking garage underneath the pavilion. Directly behind the house there is still a sunken garden with a fountain centered between two reflecting ponds. Just west of the pavilion, and surrounded by another baluster wall, was a formal garden.

Dan Starkey eventually moved to Illinois to continue publishing with members of his Sportsman Corporation. His sisters, Carrie and Mary, continued to live in the house on S. Shore Drive with relative Delbert Wentworth. Dan, 87, died in 1949, leaving no children. In 1951, the south lot with the pavilion was sold to Bill Lawrie, neighbor to the south. Today only the stately Italianate home of Dan Starkey remains to remind many Bay Viewers of the once grand estate.

John Ebersol is an amateur historian and the archivist of the South Shore Yacht Club.

Dan Starkey — Man of Politics, Parks & Publishing

By John Ebersol

Milwaukee started buying land for parks in the 1890s. The “father” of the city parks and president of the Park Commission from 1889 to 1899 was Dan Starkey’s friend Christian Wahl. Wahl’s nephew Donald Wahl married Dan’s niece, Virginia Starkey, in a ceremony in Dan’s backyard in 1936.

Starkey always longed for a lake park in Bay View. In 1909, he and neighbor Theobald Otjen advanced their own money to purchase the land that became South Shore Park. The community celebrated the park’s opening June 16, 1909 at Starkey’s pavilion. By 1913, Dan began a four-year term on the City Park Board, serving with his architect friend, Alfred Clas.

In 1915, Starkey acquired the schooner Lilly E., which served as the South Shore Yacht Club’s clubhouse until 1922. For their efforts securing the shoreline and towing the Lilly E. from Sturgeon Bay to Milwaukee, Starkey and his friend Eddy Gillen were named the club’s first life members. Starkey was also married to Harriet Wentworth.

Clara Ward, paparazzi princess

Her father built Bay View’s rolling mill, her celebrity dazzled the press.

Clara Ward was the Paris Hilton of the 1890s—the tabloid press of the day couldn’t get enough of her. For years the paparazzi followed Clara’s exploits across the globe. Described as a tall beauty shaped like a goddess, the press was especially hot on her trail after she left her Belgian prince husband to run off with a Hungarian gypsy. This scandalous behavior, according to the Des Moines Daily News, sent “tongues wagging in two continents for some years.”

Clara Ward was the daughter of Eber Brock Ward, who in the 1870s was the richest man in Michigan. He is known in Bay View as the founder of the Milwaukee Iron Company (the Bay View rolling mill).

Eber Brock Ward never actually lived in Bay View; he resided in a Detroit mansion. Like his daughter Clara, Ward was no stranger to controversy. In 1869, after 30 years of marriage and seven children, Ward’s first wife, Mary, divorced him on grounds of serial adultery. Two months later, Ward, then 57, married Catherine Lyon, who was 27. They had two children: Eber Jr., born in 1870, and Clara, in 1873.

Eber Brock Ward, Sr. died in 1875 of an apoplectic hemorrhage while walking down Griswold Street in Detroit, when Clara was only 2. The bulk of Ward’s estimated $6 million ($133 million in today’s dollars) went to Catherine and her two children. The children from Ward’s first marriage, whose lack of industriousness greatly disappointed him, were only left the Detroit family mansion and $200 each per year.

The widowed Catherine moved her children to New York City, where she met and married Alexander Cameron, a Canadian lawyer. After spending most of her childhood in Toronto, Clara, 15, was sent to a private school in London. At 17, she toured southern Europe with her mother in search of a husband, preferably one with an aristocratic title.

In Nice, France, Clara met Prince Joseph de Chimay-Caraman of Belgium, who was 15 years her senior. His title of “prince” was of semi-royal pedigree and depicted a rank, like an English lord, rather than a relationship to the Belgian crown.

The couple wed in May 1890. Shortly after the wedding, Princess Clara spent $100,000 of her $3 million inheritance toward paying off the prince’s debts and $300,000 on repairs to his Belgian chateau.

Two children were born, Marie in 1891 and Joseph in 1894. Vicious gossip concerning Clara began to circulate around Belgium society. Rumors spread that Belgian King Leopold II was paying too much attention to Princess Clara, much to the queen’s consternation. Ostracized by Belgian society, Prince Joseph and Princess Clara moved to Paris.

There they made the rounds of the fashionable Paris cafes. At the Café Faillard, Princess Clara was introduced to Rigó Jancsi, a Hungarian violinist, who was performing at the café. Rigó was described by the Macon Telegraph as looking “like the ordinary gypsy he is…[his] complexion is swarthy and his common ancestry is plainly attested in his face.” But Clara found Rigó extremely attractive, and one night she ran off with him.

Newspaper coverage of Princess Clara and her gypsy lover was extensive and made the couple instant celebrities. Hundreds of people gathered outside the couple’s Paris hotel, blocking the street. The police were called in to handle the crowds. “The princess and her paramour have visited the theaters since their arrival,” reported the Macon Telegraph. “Whenever they have appeared at places of amusement, the princess has been blazing in diamonds.”

Prince Joseph was granted a divorce in January 1897. Princess Clara lost custody of the children and had to pay alimony of $15,000 a year, half her annual income.

Clara and Rigó married in 1898. Rigo continued to perform with his violin and Clara performed at European music halls in what was known as a “tableau” in which she posed stock-still, dressed in flesh-colored tights. One newspaper described her performance as “simulating nudity.” In April 1897 Princess Clara’s tableau act was generating $6,800 a month in Berlin.

But her marriage to Rigó was a troubled one. The princess “quarreled violently with her gypsy lover…loud screams of rage and deep curses were heard issuing from the room at the hotel,” reported the Milwaukee Journal. In 1904, Clara divorced Rigo and married Giuseppe Ricciardi, a tourist agency worker.

But this marriage had problems too, and sensational newspaper accounts chronicled its demise. Ricciardi accused Clara of having an affair with his chauffeur, Abano Caselato. In March 1915 Ricciardi sued Clara for a divorce.

The following year, on Dec. 18, 1916, Clara died of pneumonia at her home in Italy. News reports claimed that she died a pauper, but according to the New York Times, Clara left a $1.2 million estate that was divided equally between Ricciardi and her two children from her first marriage, Marie and Joseph. The larger-than-life Clara Ward died at age 43.

Eber Brock Ward, Midwest captain of industry

Bay View residents know Eber Brock Ward (1811-75) as the founder of the Milwaukee Iron Works, also known as the Bay View rolling mill. The mill was established in 1867 and employed thousands of Bay View residents until it closed in 1929. But to Bay View historian Bernhard Korn, Ward was best known as the “Captain of Industry of the Midwest.” According to Korn in his doctoral dissertation, Eber Brock Ward, Pathfinder of American Industry, Ward’s goal was to make the Midwest the most productive and most prosperous section of the United States, rivaling the industrialized East.

Manufacturing Ambition

As a ship captain in the 1830s, Ward had experienced the Midwest’s agricultural economy firsthand. His ships transported many of the pioneers who settled on the shores of the Great Lakes, and in turn, transported farm products to the East, returning with necessary supplies for the settlers.

However, Ward saw the over-dependence on agriculture in the Midwest as counterproductive. He intended to take the Midwest’s predominantly agricultural economy of the mid-1800s and merge it with a manufacturing economy.

Ward’s manufacturing career began with the purchase of iron mines in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. With iron ore readily available, Ward opened his first iron mill, the Eureka Iron Works, in Wyandotte, Mich., in 1853. The North Chicago Rolling Mill in Chicago followed in 1857. Both mills manufactured iron rails, but due to the softness of the iron, the rails lost their shape within two years and were returned to the mills to be rerolled.

Ward was interested in the Bessemer process of steel making, which removed carbon from the iron, making for a stronger metal. Ward successfully produced the first Bessemer steel in America at his Wyandotte Plant on Sept. 6, 1864. From this steel, Ward’s Chicago plant rolled the first steel rails in America on May 24, 1865. In 1867 Ward opened his third mill, the Milwaukee Iron Company, on the future site of the Village of Bay View. At that point Ward was considered America’s “Iron King.”

Ward’s goal of a Midwest economy balanced between agriculture and manufacturing was soon realized. The agricultural settlements produced farm products for the densely populated cities, and in turn, growing industries in the cities produced manufactured goods.

Midwest’s Wealthiest Man

Due to his successful steel companies, Ward became the wealthiest man in the Midwest. He had married Mary Margaret McQueen in 1838. They resided in a mansion at 807 Fort St. in Detroit. A showplace of his wealth, the mansion had all the latest conveniences. The conservatory itself was large enough to hold a number of fruit trees. However, in January 1869 Mary divorced Eber on grounds of adultery. Two months later at the age of 57, Ward married 27-year-old Catherine Lyon, the niece of Ohio Senator Benjamin Wade. That same year Ward suffered a stroke that incapacitated him for a full year.

In the decade following his stroke, Ward invested his millions in assorted industries. He acquired timberland and became the largest pine forest landowner in the north-central states. The town of Ludington, Mich. grew up around his two sawmills.

Ward founded the Saginaw & Bay Salt Company in Michigan’s Saginaw Valley. Sawdust, a byproduct of his Ludington sawmill, served as fuel for the steam that that was needed to pump the salt up the 2,000-foot shaft to the surface. In 1873 the salt mine produced over 823,000 barrels. The company paved the way for the future Morton Salt Company.

As an American industrialist Ward didn’t like the importation of products from overseas, especially the importation of plate glass, used for windows and mirrors. So Ward bought up a tract of land near St. Louis containing high-grade sand deposits suitable for making the finest glass. By 1874 Ward’s American Plate Glass Company employed 300 men. The company town of Crystal City, Mo. grew up around the plant, and the company eventually became part of the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company.

Silver mining was the last of Ward’s large business ventures. In 1870 Ward purchased a 14-acre island off the north shore of Lake Superior at Thunder Bay, Ontario, containing a 70-foot vein of silver. In the first three weeks of mining, the Silver Islet Mining Company extracted $100,000 worth of silver. Per day the mine made more money than the famous Nevada Comstock mine.

Ward’s Legacy

Eber Brock Ward died of a stroke at the age of 64 on Jan. 2, 1875. Ward’s business holdings were vast and figures varied on the value of his estate, but according to a newspaper report the estate totaled over $6 million ($133 million in today’s dollars). In his will Ward left the majority of his estate to his second wife and their two children, Eber Jr. and Clara. The children from his first marriage only inherited the mansion on Fort Street, with each child receiving just $200 per month.

Ward’s children by his first marriage had a variety of “issues.” Son Charles was considered “deranged and eccentric” and went bankrupt, his father refusing to bail him out; son Henry, insane since the age of 15, was committed to the Michigan State Hospital for the Insane; son Frederick committed suicide; daughter Elizabeth was diagnosed as mentally incompetent; and daughter Mary was considered very “eccentric” in her behavior.

Eber Jr. and Clara had their own personal problems. Clara married Prince Joseph of Belgium in 1890 and became Princess Chimay. She made national headlines when she left the prince to run off with a Hungarian gypsy. Eber Jr.’s wife, Victorine, left him in 1900 after accusing him of being infatuated with his stepdaughter (her daughter), Blanche Herault.

Humboldt Park has charmed and delighted for 120 years

The Milwaukee Journal described Humboldt Park in 1896 as an extremely pretty park, a “charming urban-suburban resort.” After all these years, this description still fits, and this extremely pretty park will celebrate its 120th anniversary this summer.

Humboldt Park, originally known as South Park, was established in 1890 along with four other parks, present-day Lake, Riverside, Mitchell, and Kosciuszko. Funding these parks was an uphill battle. The 1880s witnessed heated debates, with opponents expressing outrage at the likely increase in taxation. But the supporters of the parks won the debate. On June 16, 1890, the Milwaukee Common Council passed an ordinance enabling the city to purchase land for five city parks.

The city sold $1 million in municipal bonds to fund the purchase of land for the five parks, with a portion of the bonds purchasing 46 acres for South Park/Humboldt Park. Fifteen acres from Henry Mann formed the east side of the park and 31 acres from Jane Wilcox formed the west side. Trees covered about 30 of the acres, with open meadowland covering the northwest corner.

The park opened to the public in spring 1891, with the natural setting being retained. Completely fenced, with corner boundaries marked by stone monuments, the street boundaries of the park were Idaho to the north, Howell to the west, Oklahoma to the south, and Logan to the east.

Landscaping & Construction

In 1891 an open-air pavilion, measuring 25-by-50 feet, was built. A lagoon/artificial lake was excavated in 1893. The overflow from the lagoon created a small creek, over which rustic bridges were built. Also in 1893, a boathouse was constructed on the south shore of the lagoon, which held the rental boats that were popular in the summer and served as a shelter for ice skaters in the winter. The boathouse featured a polygonal end bay with a conical roof.

The lily pond, featuring exotic lilies, was constructed in 1894 at a time when water gardening was very popular. An 1897 Milwaukee Journal article reported, “The surface of the water is covered with great green pads and the beautiful flowers lay like stars of blue and white and pink all over the surface.”

In 1900 the park was renamed Humboldt Park in honor of Baron Friedrich Heinrich Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), a then-famous German scientist and naturalist.

A new multi-story boathouse/pavilion was built in 1910 to replace the 1893 boathouse. The first level contained a large heated room used by ice skaters in winter.

Bay View resident Ruth Simos grew up near the park in the 1930s and remembers the 1910 pavilion. In the February 1991 issue of the Bay View Historian, Simos recalled the smell of the wooden floors in winter that were laid over the concrete floors “so as not to dull the skate blades.” There was a checkroom for shoes ($.05 charge) and benches for putting on skates, Simos wrote. The upper level had an assembly room and an area for refreshments and the basement had lavatories. The refreshment stand sold hot chocolate for $.05 and hot dogs for $.10, Simos wrote.

When the lagoon was expanded in 1910, a small island was created for picnickers. A concrete footbridge connected the boathouse/pavilion to the island. In summer, boats and canoes were tied to the dock. The boat rental, Simos said in recent interview, was $.10 and canoe rental was $.15 per hour.

Changes & Improvements

Around 1910 a group of concerned citizens established the Humboldt Park Sane Fourth Commission (renamed Humboldt Park Fourth of July Commission in 1926) to promote sensible Fourth of July celebrations at the park. The commission was established because of the many tragic accidents due to the careless use of fireworks, which maimed or burned many revelers.

The commission planned a busy day of safe activities, along with a gigantic display of fireworks to end the day. Arthur Hickman (1905-95) remembered the celebrations. In his book Growing Up in Bay View, Hickman recalled that on July 4, Trowbridge students marched from the school and met up with other neighborhood school students at Russell and Kinnickinnic avenues to form a parade to the park. Upon entering the park each student received a coupon good for one ice cream cone at the refreshment stand.

By 1922 the park needed to expand, so an additional 27.5 acres were purchased bordering Howell Avenue on the west, Idaho on the south, Pine on the east, and Montana on the north.

A new pavilion was built in 1932, designed by the architectural firm of Clas & Clas, and was built as a Works Progress Administration (WPA) project. Located just west of the lagoon, it replaced the old 1910 boathouse/pavilion. The 1932 one-story, Lannon stone-clad pavilion resembled a New England farmhouse. The pavilion is still rented to the public for events.

Another 1932 WPA project was a permanent band shell for outdoor concerts. Built in the shape of a seashell, the band shell was located south of Montana and east of Howell. It sat 100 musicians and 200 singers and provided public seating for over 20,000 on a gradual ascending lawn. A fire destroyed the band shell Oct. 6, 1975. Arson was suspected. A new band shell, in the style of a Swiss chalet, was built on the base of the old one and was dedicated July 10, 1977.

Two other buildings are presently located in Humboldt Park. A one-story maintenance building, designed in a style similar to the 1932 pavilion, was completed in 1962. It contains a large assembly hall and restrooms and is used as a park maintenance building. It has an adjoining wading pool and playground. The other structure is the World War One Memorial kiosk, measuring 20 feet tall, 12 feet in diameter, and constructed of Wisconsin red granite. Paid for by donations through the efforts of the Bay View Homecoming and Reconstruction Commission, it was dedicated May 22, 1921. Inside is a bronze plaque with the names of 22 Bay View servicemen who died in the war between 1918 and 1919.

Humboldt Park is now a Milwaukee County park. In 1937 the city and the county consolidated their parks.

All historic photos are courtesy the Milwaukee Public Library Historic Photo collection. All modern photos were taken by the author.

Milwaukee Iron Company

To most residents it was known as the Bay View rolling mill, but the mill’s official name was the Milwaukee Iron Company. Founded in 1867 by Michigan industrialist Eber Brock Ward, it was Ward’s third iron mill. The first one was established in Wyandotte, Mich. in 1853, and the second in Chicago in 1857.

Ward’s iron mills utilized blast furnaces to extract iron metal from raw iron ore. The iron metal was then purified and finally turned into various iron products such as pig iron, iron rails, and iron nails.

Back in the 1850s Ward was also the co-owner of the Ward Lake Superior Line, a large fleet of shipping vessels. He often did business at the old Milwaukee harbor, especially with Enoch Chase at Chase’s lakefront warehouse. At that time, Town of Lake, located south of the harbor mouth, was purely agricultural with family farms dotting the Lake Michigan shoreline. When Ward was looking for a site for his third mill, he remembered the Town of Lake and the high ground south of Deer Creek, seeing it as an ideal place for an iron mill.

Ward’s primary motivation for building his third mill was the threat of competition by the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad (CMStPRR). The railroad refused to buy Ward’s iron rails because Ward was selling iron rails to CMStPRR’s competitors. CMStPRR bought rails from England, and rumor had it that the railroad planned to open an iron mill to produce its own rails.

Ward wanted no such competition and enlisted the help of Alexander Mitchell, president of Milwaukee’s largest bank and a director of the Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul Railroad. Ward offered Mitchell the position of treasurer of the Milwaukee Iron Mill and Mitchell accepted. Thus with Mitchell’s influence, the railroad began purchasing Ward’s rails.

After filing incorporation papers for his new mill, Ward purchased a total of 114 acres from S.K. Worthington and David McDougall in the Town of Lake (now Bay View). Of the total acreage, 27.5 acres were reserved for the mill yard and company buildings. The approximate boundaries are the present-day streets of Russell on the south, S. Bay on the west, Lake Michigan on the east, and Lincoln Avenue on the north. The remaining acreage was platted into small building lots, to be sold to workers. A number of boarding houses, including the Palmer House on S. St. Clair Street that housed 60 men in 1870, and 24 company houses were constructed. The first company buildings were an office building, a machine shop, and a rail mill.

Ward appointed Stephen Clement president and J.J. Hagerman superintendent. Many skilled workers were recruited from England, such as furnace builders William Dennis and James Meredith, furnace keepers Stephen Bird and Joseph Starkey, “puddler” David Morgan, and iron “roller” James Hidge. (A puddler was a highly skilled worker who purified pig iron by heating and stirring it.) “Ward must have materially depopulated the English blast furnaces,” reported Bernhard Korn in The Story of Bay View. The first furnace began operating in April 1870.

For the first year the mill was not producing iron but was rather exclusively re-rolling rails. Due to the softness of the iron, rails wore out in two years or less and had to be returned to the mill and re-rolled. Shortly after, the company began manufacturing iron and was manufacturing and re-rolling 30,000 tons of rail per year. In the early 1870s Ward’s factories began producing steel from pig iron using the Bessemer process of steel production. The process blasted compressed air through the molten iron to burn out excess carbon and impurities. The result was steel, a product much stronger than iron.

A thriving community grew up around the mill. In 1870, 348 men and 212 women lived in the 88 dwellings adjacent to the mill. A blacksmith shop, boiler shops, bumping works, and storehouses were constructed. There were over 600 men employed at the mill, many of them commuters from other areas of the city. The mill workers worked 12-hour days at a wage of $2.50 to $6 a day, with the puddlers and rollers at the top of the pay scale.

The Financial Panic of 1873 hit the mill hard. Another setback was the sudden death of Ward on Jan. 2, 1875. He died of a stroke at age 64 near his residence in Detroit. The mill closed in October 1876, due in part to the difficulty of settling Ward’s estate. The plant reopened in January 1877, with James J. Hagerman and several associates operating it under receivership. In 1878 the North Chicago Rolling Mills Company took possession of the Bay View plant.

In the late 1880s there was a growing trend toward the consolidation of steel companies in the United States. In 1889 the Chicago Rolling Mills, Union Steel, Joliet Steel, and the Bay View steel plant merged to form the Illinois Steel Company. In 1898 Illinois Steel merged with the Federal Steel Company. In 1901 Federal Steel and Carnegie Steel merged, forming the U.S. Steel Company, the world’s largest steel company.

At its peak in 1889, the mill employed 1,600 men and produced millions of dollars worth of steel products. But things began to turn bleak for the mill in the 1920s. According to Erwin F. Zillman’s book, So You Will Know… “Due to technological advances in the steel industry, and concentration of Middle Western steel production in the Chicago area, operations at the Milwaukee plant declined…” In 1929 the Bay View plant closed for good.

On July 5, 1938, the city of Milwaukee purchased the abandoned Bay View steel mill for nearly $2.8 million. The factory site, now covering 132 acres, was to be used for the expansion of the municipal harbor and the extension of Lincoln Memorial Drive. In early December 1938, during an “open house” sponsored by the Milwaukee Harbor Commission, over 5,000 people visited the old steel mill before demolition. According to Bay View resident Emil Cialdini, the city allowed people to salvage scrap metal from the old mill site. Emil’s father, Alfredo, who had been a laborer at the mill, had an advantage and knew where the cast iron pipes were located.

Bay View Rolling Mills Massacre May 1886

On May 1, 1886, thousands of striking Milwaukee factory workers took to the streets demanding an eight-hour workday. Three days later, all the factories were closed due to the strike with the exception of the Bay View rolling mill.

On May 5, 1,500 strikers marched from Mitchell Street to the Bay View rolling mill, with the intention of shutting it down. At S. Bay Street and Lincoln Avenue, the state militia warned the crowd to turn back, but the crowd refused. The militia opened fire, killing seven and injuring others. This carnage ended the eight-hour-day labor dispute, and it wasn’t until 1938 that the Fair Labor Standards Act instituted the eight-hour day. -AP

Commemorating the Massacre on May 2, 2010

The Bay View Tragedy, alternatively known as the Bay View Massacre, will be commemorated 3pm Sunday, May 2, 2010 at the state historical marker site at S. Superior Street and E. Russell Avenue. This year marks the 124th anniversary of the event and the 24th annual commemoration.

David Newby, president of the Wisconsin AFL-CIO, will speak. Also on the program is Frank Mulvey of the Bay View Historical Society and folksinger Larry Penn.

The event, sponsored by the Wisconsin Labor History Society and the Bay View Historical Society, is free and open to the public.

Update: Steel clarification

Was steel produced in Bay View or not? Evidence supports the claim that steel products were produced, but not all the evidence agrees that steel itself was produced so it’s still an open question.

In May’s column about the Milwaukee Iron Company, it was stated that the company was producing Bessemer steel in the 1870s (per Bernhard Korn’s book Story of Bay View). Compass reader John Ebersol challenges that statement, saying that no Bessemer converters showed up on photos taken of the mill in 1938 before it was razed.

Upon closer study, an 1880 iron and steel directory was found that identifies Bessemer (steel) products as being manufactured at the mill.

However, in defense of Ebersol’s claim, an 1892 book on the manufacturing of iron states that steel was not produced in Wisconsin until the early 1890s. Also, an article in the 1912 Journal of Geography states that by 1912 no steel was being produced at the Bay View mill.

Since sources appear to be contradictory, at this point there is no definitive proof one way or another, but it is possible that Bessemer steel was produced at the mill and later discontinued and converters removed. -Anna Passante

The old Wilcox homestead

Large and luscious” is how the Milwaukee Sentinel described the strawberries grown on Joel Wilcox’s Town of Lake farm in the summer of 1870. “We have seen none in the market to compare with them either in size or in flavor,” the Sentinel claimed. Seventeen years earlier, the Sentinel had praised Wilcox’s two-foot-long sweet potatoes. Why did Wilcox’s produce grow so big? Perhaps it was due to the abundant leaf compost left behind after Wilcox cleared his land of dense forest.

Wilcox’s farm sat between Becher Street and Lincoln Avenue and Bay Street and Lake Michigan, near the site of the present-day Wrought Washer Company. Farming ran in the Wilcox family. Joel, born in 1808, grew up on a farm in Vesper, N.Y., and like many New Yorkers, looked to the wilderness of the Midwest to establish his own farm. Wilcox married New Yorker Jane Shields in December 1833 and in the fall of 1834 traveled solo to Wisconsin to the future Town of Lake area to stake his land claim.

After staking his claim, Wilcox arranged for a house to be built and returned to New York to fetch his wife. When they arrived the following summer, they found no house, so a temporary “brush shanty” was constructed until a log house could be built. In 1845, the log house was replaced with a home in the Greek Revival style. Wilcox purchased his 90-acre claim for $1.25 per acre during the government land sale of 1839.

Wilcox cleared the heavily timbered property and sold the wood to shipping vessels for fuel, including those of Captain Eber Brock Ward, the future owner of the Milwaukee Iron Company (aka the Bay View rolling mill). “Since access to the harbor was blocked by the sand bar,” reported Bernhard Korn in his book Story of Bay View, “Wilcox built a crude scow and was soon busy hauling wood to the boats.” Fuel was not the only service Wilcox provided to the ships. Wilcox gave shelter to crewmembers of shipwrecks during the terrible lake storms.

When the harbor mouth was moved farther north in 1857 (known as the straight cut), it was a blow to Wilcox’s wood sales. Subsequently, Wilcox focused his entire attention on the cultivation of his farm.

Along with a great strawberry patch and vegetable garden, Wilcox also had a large orchard. Captain William Donahue (1846-1928), in his memoir History of Milwaukee in Early Days, recalled stealing apples and plums from the Wilcox orchard. “Old Man Wilcox had a bear trap set in the corner of the orchard, near where the boys used to jump the fence… [the bear trap] was well covered, and hard to find, but once in a while one of the boys found it, and never forgot the old trap,” Donahue wrote. “Aunt Jane” Wilcox, at times, took a broomstick to the boys. “We could run faster than she, and jump the fence…and get out of her reach.”

When Joel Wilcox died in 1873 at the age of 62, Jane sold the farm to the Milwaukee Iron Company. The Wilcox house was then moved to 2986 S. Howell Ave., on property owned by Jane Wilcox. In the October 1990 issue of the Bay View Historian, Mae Gerlach Hanleck reported that the Wilcox house “was rolled to a raft and tug-boated through the harbor, down the Kinnickinnic River to the pumping station on Chase Avenue. From there the house was put onto a flat bed and pulled by several teams of horses [down Chase] to Oklahoma Avenue, which was then a dirt road, to Howell Avenue.” Jane Wilcox lived in the house until 1890, at which time the park commission purchased 31 acres of the Wilcox property for South Park, later known as Humboldt Park. The old Wilcox house was sold to the park commission for $150 and Jane moved to the home of her only child, daughter Louise Sanderson, who lived at 730 E. Pleasant St. on Milwaukee’s East Side (now razed). Jane died at the age of 88 in November 1898.

The old Wilcox house became the residence of the Humboldt Park superintendents. The original exterior, Hanleck wrote, was narrow clapboard, painted white with dark green shutters. In the August 1981 issue of the Bay View Historian, the late Meta Mussman Lawrie said that she and her brother George Mussman grew up in the old Wilcox house. Their widowed mother had married the park superintendent, Theodore Gerlach, in 1912. The house, according to Meta, was a “sturdy home with heavy timbers under the floors.” It had a big kitchen and a steep, narrow stairway to the second floor bedrooms.

When the old Wilcox house was slated for demolition in the late 1960s, Meta and her brother George got permission to take their children and grandchildren on a tour of the house. “The old home, with its steep stairway, its summer kitchen, and its big pantry, brought back the memories of almost 50 years earlier as clearly as yesterday,” Meta recalled.

Where was Wilcox Street?

Wilcox Street once ran east to Lake Michigan from the intersection of Bay Street and Lenox Street (Lenox then known as Reynolds). Per Milwaukee Public Library records, the street existed from 1879 to 1929. -AP

Land Rush!

In the mid-1830s many pioneer settlers arrived in what is today Bay View, staking claims in the future Town of Lake/Bay View area. Land surveys were not completed until 1836, however, so these early Yankee settlers had no legal right to settle the land.

To complicate matters, in the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, the indigenous Potawatomi Indians had ceded their Milwaukee-area lands to the federal government, but the Indians weren’t all forced to relocate until 1838.

So for almost a decade, the area took on the qualities often associated with the wild west.  »Read more

Three ships wrecked off St. Francis coast

Three 19th-century Great Lakes sailing ships, the Boston, the Sebastopol, and the Alleghany, had two things in common. All three were shipwrecked off the shore of St. Francis, Wis., and all three were shipwrecked as a result of an inadequate Milwaukee harbor.

Milwaukee’s original harbor (located about a half-mile south of the present-day harbor) had a shallow harbor entrance, which kept larger ships from entering the inner harbor. These larger ships were forced to anchor outside the harbor entrance at extended piers to unload their goods. Without the protection of the inner harbor during fierce lake storms, many of the ships risked great damage or destruction. Also, due to inadequate navigational lighting, ship captains found it difficult to find the harbor at night, especially during a storm, resulting in ships running aground. Between 1846 and 1855, the three previously mentioned sailing ships were doomed because of these inadequacies.

Fate of the Boston

The side-wheel steamship Boston was built in 1845 and measured 210 feet in length. On Nov. 24, 1846, the Boston arrived in Milwaukee from Buffalo, N.Y., but was unable to enter the inner harbor due to the shallowness of the harbor mouth. The ship instead docked at the extended pier to discharge its cargo. At around 8pm that evening a horrific storm came out of the northeast. Seeking safety, Captain William T. Pease again attempted to take the ship through the harbor mouth into the inner harbor, but the Boston was caught by the powerful gale and lost its smoke stacks, rendering the engines useless.

Anchors were lowered, in hopes of riding out the storm, but the strong winds dragged the Boston southward and around 11pm the ship struck bottom about 150 feet off the shore of the present-day St. Francis Seminary in St. Francis. Help arrived and all the crew and passengers were rescued. The surf broke over the ship, which filled with water. The remaining smoke stack hung limply over the side. An organ destined for an Episcopal church was rescued, as well as cabin doors and panel work, and the vessel’s engine.

Sebastopol Doomed

On Sept. 12, 1855, the side-wheel steamship Sebastopol left Boston for Milwaukee with a crew of 33 and 60 passengers. The newly built ship measured 234 feet long. The 600 tons of cargo, worth $100,000, included copper, tin, lead and iron ingots, safes, and 50 horses. The Sebastopol arrived near the Milwaukee harbor during a severe northeastern storm. Captain Thomas Watts sailed toward what he thought were lights on the harbor pier but in all likelihood were the lights of a another ship or the lights of the houses on the bluff. The Sebastopol traveled off course three miles south of the harbor and struck bottom 200 feet off the shore of the present-day St. Mary’s Academy in St. Francis.

Sebastopol crewmembers set out in a lifeboat, but it capsized and three were drowned. A government lifeboat rescued crew and passengers, including Captain Watts’ wife and four children. Seven or eight of the horses were saved, with some survivors reaching the shore on horseback. Valued at $1,000 each, more horses could have been saved but it was impossible to get them to jump in the water, according to the Milwaukee Sentinel.

The bodies of the three crewmembers, James Clark, Frank (last name unknown), and Morris Berry were recovered from the lake. “I have had all three of the bodies taken to the Lake Protestant Cemetery [in St. Francis] and decently buried side by side,” said Justice of the Peace Jared Thompson in a Milwaukee Sentinel editorial. Three more bodies were later recovered. Cargo was strewn across the beach and at the bottom of the lake. (Divers rediscovered the shipwreck in the 1970s in 15 feet of water near E. Oklahoma Avenue and salvaged items including pewter tableware, ironstone dishes, and a brass belt.)

Last Gasp of the Alleghany

On the evening of Oct. 20, 1855, during a heavy northeastern storm, the propeller ship Alleghany approached the Milwaukee harbor. The 177-foot ship was built in 1849. Captain Asa S. Curtiss saw no light on the harbor piers and ended up anchoring north of the harbor. Due to the intense storm, the anchor did not hold. The ship lost its smoke pipe, was dragged to the southwest, and struck bottom about 100 feet from the lakeshore of the present-day St. Francis Seminary. A local newspaper reported that various articles of cargo were thrown in the water, “forming a sort of bridge from the boat to the shore, on which the women and children were carried.” All 30 passengers survived.

In 1848, the Wisconsin Legislature passed a law allowing Milwaukee to levy a tax to pay for the construction a new harbor entrance. By 1857, a new, safer harbor entrance opened (known as the straight-cut) just north of the original harbor.

19th-century Ships of the Great Lakes

Schooners, side-wheel steamships, and propeller steamships sailed the Great Lakes during the 19th century. These commercial vessels moved cargo and passengers between the Great Lakes ports. Schooners were big sailboats powered by the wind and had two or more masts. Side-wheel steamships had locomotive-type boilers that were fueled by coal and wood. The boilers created steam that turned the ship’s side paddlewheels. Propeller steamships also had boilers that provided steam power that turned the submerged propellers. All three types of shipping vessels continued to be used on the Great Lakes well into the 20th century.

Other 1846-55 Shipwrecks off Milwaukee County’s Lake Shore

• C. C. Trowbridge, side-wheel steamer, 1842
• Badger, side-wheel steamer, 1837
• Bolivar, schooner, 1847
• Nile, side-wheel steamer, 1850
• Buckeye State, schooner, 1852
• Active, schooner, 1855
• J. Steinhart, schooner, 1855
• John F. Porter, schooner, 1855
• Orleans, brig,1855

Source: maritimetrails.org

**There are no known drawings or period images of the Boston, Sebastopol, or Alleghany. Shown below are some period steam-powered vessels that would have plied the Great Lakes. Click to enlarge.

Town of Lake’s Civil War draft

Volunteer or be drafted. That was the message barely beneath the surface of Wisconsin Civil War recruitment posters like the one that shouted, “Arouse! Volunteers Wanted!”

Wisconsin, like other states, was having difficulty filling its volunteer quota set by the federal government. The recruitment posters alone did not spur enlistments, so President Lincoln mandated that any state unable to provide its quota of men through voluntary means by Aug. 15, 1862 had to draft men between the ages of 18 to 45 to make up the difference. Wisconsin failed to fill its quota by that date, so draft lotteries took place around the state.

Three Years with a Draft

On Nov. 19, 1862, the first Milwaukee County draft lottery took place at the Milwaukee County Courthouse. A quota had been set for each of the Milwaukee County townships-Milwaukee (north of what was then the city of Milwaukee), Granville, Wauwatosa, Greenfield, Franklin, Oak Creek, and Lake (see sidebar), as well as a number of wards in the City of Milwaukee.

Town of Lake, which then included what is today Bay View, had a considerable number of local men who had already enlisted. Because of the high enlistment rate for this still mainly rural area, Town of Lake’s draft quota was lower than the other townships. For the first draft lottery in 1862, Town of Lake had a quota of 18 men. These draftees were to serve 90 days.

The Milwaukee Sentinel described the draft lottery process at the courthouse on Nov. 20, 1862. Twelve boxes were lined up on a table, one for each of the townships and wards, with each box containing ballots with the names of residents from that township who were eligible for the draft.

A large 18-by-8-inch black walnut box was used for drawing the draft lottery ballots. Each township box was emptied separately into this box. “Mr. Milman handled the big box and shook up the ballots well before each draw,” reported the Sentinel. Daniel McCarty, a “young lad,” was blindfolded and drew the names. Each ballot name was read aloud and was recorded by two clerks.

Thousands of people, including representatives from each township, witnessed the procedure. After ballots from each of the townships were drawn, the list of draftees was read. “The reading of the list was listened to with the best of good feeling,” according to the Sentinel, “and at the conclusion of each reading, cheers were given.”

In 1863 and 1864 draft lotteries were also conducted. Town of Lake had to meet a quota of 50 men in 1863, and a quota of 36 men in 1864. Over the three-year period from 1862 to 1864, 104 men were drafted from Town of Lake.

According to the Wisconsin Historical Society’s website, only a small number of the draftees actually served in the war. In 1864, for example, only about 20 percent of the 17,534 Wisconsin men drafted were actually mustered into service. About 40 percent “claimed exemption from service” and the other 40 percent “simply failed to report for duty.”

Draft Drama

Draftees were allowed to hire substitutes, whose going rates ranged from $200 to $350. Several advertisements appeared in local papers, in which individuals offered themselves as substitutes. Some draftees were disqualified due to physical disabilities and some paid a $300 commutation fee or got an exemption due to family hardship. In December 1863, a draft dodger list was issued, which included 15 men from Town of Lake.

The clergy was not exempt from the draft lottery process. Procurator Father Joseph Salzmann of the St. Francis Seminary on S. Lake Drive secured a substitute for $300 and was exempt from military duty for three years.

Professor Mathias Gernbauer, knowing the anxiety seminarians felt about the draft, played a practical joke by having two older students dress up as recruiting officers. As students gathered at the front entrance of the seminary building, Gernbauer had the two imposters walk up the pathway. Word rapidly spread among the students that the recruiters were coming and “all who were Americans and old enough [for the draft], disappeared in a grand stampede for the safety of cellars and other hiding places,” wrote Reverend Peter Leo Johnson in his seminary history, Halcyon Days. By May 1864, half of the seminary students had fled, some to Canada. Six of the eligible seminarians were drafted that year.

Town of Lake

Town of Lake was formed Jan. 2, 1838 by an act of territorial legislation and was located in what is now Milwaukee County. By the middle 1840s the boundaries of Town of Lake were Greenfield Avenue to the north, Lake Michigan to the east, 27th Street to the west, and College Avenue to the south. In 1879, the Village of Bay View was carved out of Town of Lake.

Over the years the territory of Town of Lake was reduced due to incorporations and annexations of its land. The incorporation of the Village of Bay View reduced the size of the town in 1879, and shortly after that the City of Milwaukee annexed the area between Lincoln and Greenfield avenues. The incorporation of the Village of Cudahy in 1895 again reduced the size of the town. In the early 1900s, the City of Milwaukee annexed Town of Lake’s Fernwood neighborhood south of E. Oklahoma Avenue, and then the area south and west of Humboldt Park. The incorporation of the City of St. Francis in 1951 further reduced Town of Lake, and finally, in 1954, the City of Milwaukee annexed the remaining portion.

Old Smoky

One man’s junk is another man’s treasure, says the old adage. When the retired steam locomotive Old Smoky was placed on display in Bay View in May 1957, it was considered a treasure. Mayor Frank Zeidler heralded it as an educational tool, one that would “serve the children-as a friend and teacher.” But by the 1970s, some Milwaukee aldermen were calling Old Smoky “a piece of junk.”

According to period news accounts, in fall 1954 a class of second graders first suggested to Mayor Zeidler that a steam locomotive should be on public display. Zeidler appointed a committee to obtain an engine and establish a trust fund for its preservation.

In June 1955, the city of Milwaukee accepted a steam locomotive (known as Number 265) from Milwaukee Road Railroad. The city planned to put the old locomotive on permanent display in one of the county parks.

However, the city selected a city-owned piece of land just north of E. Conway Street and just west of the U.S. Naval Reserve Armory on S. Lincoln Memorial Drive. The former site is across the street from the present Dom & Phil’s De Marinis Pizza Restaurant, now green space unofficially known as Bridgeport Park. A trust fund of $7,000 was raised from donations for the perpetual care of the locomotive exhibit. A naming contest was held. Charles Schmidt, age 5, of South Milwaukee won with “Old Smoky.”  »Read more

Eschweiler designed unique house used by three doctors

In the early 1900s, well-known Milwaukee architect Alexander C. Eschweiler designed many of the palatial homes on Milwaukee’s affluent East Side, including the Charles Allis house at 1801 N. Prospect Ave. and the Robert Nunnemacher house at 2409 N. Wahl Ave.

But on Milwaukee’s south side, Eschweiler is known only to have designed two houses. In 1903, he designed an Arts and Crafts style house for his friend Dr. William Batchelor at 2445 S. Kinnickinnic Ave. in Bay View. In 1913, he designed an Arts and Crafts style house for Arthur Manegold at 1202 S. Layton Blvd.

The Batchelor house, however, was not just a residence. For over seven decades, the house also served as a medical office for three physicians: Dr. Batchelor, Dr. Earle X. Thompson, and Dr. Joseph Halser, Jr.

Dr. William Batchelor

Batchelor was born in Marietta, Ohio in 1856. He graduated from Marietta College in 1878 and earned his M.D. at the University of Pennsylvania in 1884. That year he married Emma Granger of Marietta, and they moved to Bay View, residing at 1339 E. Potter Ave., where he also practiced medicine.

According to a city directory, in 1888 Batchelor moved his medical practice to a home at 2445 S. Kinnickinnic Ave., and by 1891 the city directory records that the family was also residing there. The couple had two sons, Roger (b. 1890) and Henry (b. 1892).

In addition to his private practice, Batchelor was a surgeon for Milwaukee Hospital, Emergency Hospital, Milwaukee’s Children’s Hospital, company physician for the Bay View Illinois Steel Company, and railroad surgeon for the Chicago, Lake Shore & Eastern Railway Co.

In early 1903, Batchelor decided to move his Queen Anne style home to a lot across the street to 533 E. Wilson St. (where it remains today) in order to build a larger home on his Kinnickinnic Avenue property (present-day northwest corner of KK & Wilson). Batchelor continued to live and practice medicine in his relocated home while his new house was being built.

In May 1903, Eschweiler completed the architectural plan and the Meredith Brothers of Bay View began construction of Dr. Batchelor’s new home and office. The red-brick house was 3,896 square feet and 2.5 stories, clad with cedar shake above the first floor. The architectural drawings for the house at the Wisconsin Architectural Archive essentially reflect the present layout of the house.

The first floor features a living room, dining room with stained glass windows, library with a brick fireplace, wide oak staircase, an enclosed servants staircase, and a kitchen. A butler’s pantry connects the kitchen to the dining room. Most of these rooms have oak woodwork and oak coffered ceilings.

The original architectural drawings show two rear rooms on the first floor that comprised the medical office. One room was a waiting room and the other an examination room with a small closet laboratory. Patients entered the doctor’s office through a separate entrance on E. Wilson Street.

A two-way mirror (like the kind used in police interrogation rooms) was installed in the newly constructed wall at the base of the central stairway, which allowed the doctor or his wife to peer into the waiting room, unobserved, to see if patients were waiting.

There are three bedrooms, a study with a brick fireplace, one full bath, and one half bath on the second floor. The architectural drawing identifies an additional room at the back of the second floor as a sewing room. This room was most likely also a servant’s bedroom. According to census records, 22-year-old Ida Oberst was a servant in 1900 and 21-year-old Julia (last name unclear on census record) in 1910. The walk-up third-floor attic provides capacious storage space.

In 1904, Eschweiler designed a stable and coach house, topped with a cupola, west of the house. Bay View contractor Elias Stollenwerk did the carpentry work and the Meredith Brothers of Bay View the masonry work.

After Batchelor

Batchelor died in 1920. Two years later, his widow sold the property and the medical practice to 30-year-old Dr. Earle X. Thompson, formerly of the state of Maryland. At the time he bought the Batchelor property, Thompson had a medical office and residence at 4708 S. Packard Ave. (now razed) in Cudahy. He was also the company doctor for the Patrick Cudahy Company.

Thompson expanded the doctor’s office by erecting a wall between the living room and dining room. The living room became a patient waiting room and the former waiting room became an X-ray room. A two-way mirror (like the kind used in police interrogation rooms) was installed in the newly constructed wall at the base of the central stairway, which allowed the doctor or his wife to peer into the waiting room, unobserved, to see if patients were waiting.

In 1941, Dr. Joseph G. Halser, Jr. purchased the property and practice from Dr. Thompson. Halser and his wife Dorothea “Dot” lived in the house with Thompson and his wife Marion for nine months in preparation for taking over the practice. After the nine-month transition, Thompson moved back East with his wife.

Dorothea Halser worked beside her husband in the practice. She was responsible for raising the children, cooking, and cleaning, as well as performing receptionist duties and being her husband’s nurse assistant. Halser practiced medicine into the mid-1970s and died in 1984. Along with his private practice, Halser was also the company doctor for Cudahy’s Ladish Company.

When the Halsers moved into the house there were ginkgo trees on the property. The Chinese ambassador to the United States had given Dr. Batchelor three ginkgo trees, according to Dorothea Halser. The ginkgo trees became Dorothea’s passion. She is considered the person who was responsible for propagating the ginkgo tree around the Milwaukee area. There are still ginkgo trees on the Kinnickinnic Avenue property.

In 2009, Bill Doyle, a well-known Bay View house rehabber, purchased the Eschweiler house. According to Doyle, Joseph Halser III, the son of the late doctor, called him and asked if he would like to purchase the house. “The Halser family chose me over a number of people who had offered to buy the house,” said Doyle. The Halsers wanted to sell the house to someone they could trust to preserve the historic fabric of the house, Doyle said.

He acknowledged it’s an ambitious project, but Doyle said he plans to restore the house to its former glory. He’s already completed some exterior work, including a new roof and the replacement of decorative shingling on the second story. Inside the house, he removed the wall between the living room and the dining room. He said he carefully removed the two-way mirror that was housed in the wall and is preserving it.

Doyle intends to retain as much of the house’s history as possible, including the unique black roller blinds in the former X-ray room and the footed cast iron bathtub in the upstairs bathroom. Doyle credited the Halsers for their years of stewardship and said he’s committed to the house, too. He doesn’t see himself just as its owner. “I see myself as the caretaker of this house,” he said.

1886 Bay View ball club—city and state champions

Baseball had been played in Milwaukee since the 1860s, but local amateur interest really took off in 1884, with over 200 local baseball teams receiving coverage in Milwaukee’s newspapers. These impressive numbers continued throughout the decade. Most major companies, and many smaller companies, sponsored a team. Groups of men, boys-and occasionally girls-from neighborhoods throughout the city also formed teams. Bay View was no exception, and one team would stand out, winning both the city and state championships in 1886.

The Bay Views

The amateur baseball club of Bay View first appeared in 1884 and became a major local force in 1885. Playing in the newly formed amateur four-team City League, the Bay Views compiled a record of 14-6. A team sponsored by James Morgan, a large downtown clothier, put together a record of 11-4 in the league. Although the Bay View team won more games, the Morgans thought they should be the champions, having beaten Bay View in three of five games played. These two clubs set out to decide the City League championship with a three-game series in October and November. Rain cancelled the games, leaving the matter unsettled.

In August 1885, Bay View club general manager William Sisson, a salesman, and field manager Felix McIver, a Bay View saloon owner, announced they would “support a paid nine” for the next season. The two men leased grounds in Bay View and built a “first-class baseball park,” complete with a grandstand and enclosed by a high board fence. They also set out to subscribe $1,000 in stock for building purposes. According to Milwaukee city directories, these grounds were at Kinnickinnic and Garfield (today, Garfield Street is known as Pine Avenue and no longer connects with KK, but then would have between Dover Street and Potter Avenue). The park was completed in May 1886 at an estimated cost of $4,500.

Ready for 1886

New men were involved in the club in 1886. Anton Stollenwerk, who owned a saloon and boarding house on S. Bay Street, and Richard M. Moore, listed as a “heater” in the 1886 city directory, formed a partnership with Felix McIver to run the park and club for the upcoming season.  »Read more

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