Smith Street named for city’s first tailor

Bay View’s E. Smith Street isn’t very long, only several blocks, extending from S. Burrell Street to S. Kinnickinnic Avenue. It was named for Uriel B. Smith, an early Bay View resident. But considering the amount of living Smith packed into his 90 years, Smith Street perhaps should have been as long as Howell or Lincoln avenues.

Smith was Milwaukee’s first tailor, the father of the first white child born in Milwaukee, and a Bay View land developer. He was born in Tully, New York in 1812. When Smith and his wife Lucy arrived in pioneer Milwaukee in July 1835, lodgings were scarce, so they lived for a few months in a tent on the property of Joel Wilcox near S. Bay and E. Becher streets.

Soon after, Smith rafted lumber down the Milwaukee River and built a shanty for his home/tailor shop on present-day N. Water Street, between Wisconsin Avenue and Michigan Street. Their first child was born Oct. 11, 1835, the first white child born in Milwaukee. Lucy was pregnant with the child during their trip to Milwaukee. Traveling on the same ship was one Colonel McCarty, a business partner of Milwaukee founder and fur trader Solomon Juneau. McCarty asked for the privilege of naming the Smiths’ child, and offered to bestow on the child a prime piece of real estate. The request was accepted and the colonel named her Milwaukee Harriet Smith. A building lot in the then-swampy Third Ward was selected.

Like a Squaw

Demand was great for Smith’s tailoring skills, and he quickly used up the supply of cloth he brought from the East. Indian blankets were in abundance, however, and Smith bought large quantities from Juneau’s trading post to make men’s overcoats and pantaloons (loose-fitting pants that were gathered at the ankle). Soon the ladies of the town requested the blanket pantaloons to help them survive the cold winters.

The Indians found Smith an oddity. “The young Indians would gather around the tailor shop and make evident their contempt for a white man who sat crosslegged and drudged like a squaw,” wrote Bernhard Korn in his book Story of Bay View. The “squaws” also found the sight of a man making clothes highly unusual.

In 1838 Smith moved his home and business to Walker’s Point at present-day E. Pittsburgh and S. First Street. Twelve years later, Smith got the gold rush fever, and on March 13, 1850, he and his second wife (first wife Lucy died around 1837) headed for California.

According to a Milwaukee Sentinel article, 14 covered wagons, each pulled by two horses, left Milwaukee with 25 people led by Captain George Barber. The Smiths returned after one year. Smith didn’t return to the tailoring business. He opened a real estate office in Walker’s Point, most likely funded with his gold rush earnings.

In 1868 Smith purchased part of the Joseph Williams homestead, south of Lincoln Avenue in Bay View. He had the land surveyed and platted, and then sold the lots. On one of the lots, presently addressed 2418 S. Howell Ave., Smith built a home, which still exists at that location. St. Augustine’s Catholic Church purchased nine of Smith’s lots in 1889. By 1882 Smith had his real office at the corner of KK and Lincoln.

Smith’s Family

Smith’s son Tully, named for his father’s hometown, worked as a contractor and an engineer. Apparently inheriting his father’s gold rush fever, 20-year-old Tully traveled to Pike’s Peak in 1858 with his friend Uriah Balford. Tragically, Tully lost sight in his left eye in an explosion and Balford lost sight in both eyes and lost a hand. Despite his injuries, Tully became wealthy dealing in Milwaukee and Bay View real estate. Tully owned land near his father, and in 1871 created E. Smith Street, named for his father.

By early 1884, Tully Smith was losing the sight in his remaining eye and was diagnosed with heart disease. Friends also expressed concern about Tully’s deteriorating mental state. In mid-May, the family reported him missing. Tully had gone to New Orleans and committed suicide in a bathhouse, leaving behind no identification. However, shortly before committing suicide, Tully had sent a money package containing $1,000 to his home address in Bay View. Suspicious of a package postmarked New Orleans, Tully’s wife contacted the New Orleans police department. Through a physical description of the body and personal effects, the body at the bathhouse was identified as being that of Tully Smith, age 46.

Tully left a large estate (valued at $125,000—over $2 million today) to his wife, Maria; a son, Leonard; and a daughter, Lottie. His father, Uriel, died in 1902 at age 90, and was survived by his three daughters: Milwaukee Hockelberg, Callie McDonald, and Lucy Smith.

Watercolorist George Burns was native son of Bay View

By Anna Passante

Bay View Oracle yearbook photo of Burns, 1930. The “Sem”—short for the St. Francis Seminary Woods—was for many Bay View neighborhood kids the most wonderful playground in the world, according to George T. Burns, who shared his memories in the 1993 issue of the Bay View Historian.

“We thought of the ‘Sem’ as belonging to us,” Burns recalled. “With a feeling for the place much like that the ancient Druids had for their sacred groves. For example, one night one boy inadvertently stepped on a grave and said, ‘Excuse me,’ and only half in jest.”

Swinging through the trees like Tarzan in summer and skating on the frozen ponds in winter, Burns likened their experiences in the “Sem” to the exploits of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn.

Life of Education

Born July 10, 1911, Burns moved to Bay View at the age of 10 and attended Trowbridge Elementary School. After graduating from Bay View High School in 1930, Burns graduated from the Milwaukee State Teachers College in 1935, and went on to earn a masters in education from Columbia University in 1941.

In the late 1930s, Burns worked in the wooden toy unit of the Milwaukee Handicraft Project, a division of the Works Progress Administration. His childhood friend Dick Wiken also worked there. Burns managed the production of educational wooden toys made for nursery schools, public schools, and institutions around the country. He also designed a number of toys, including a tugboat, freight train, and barges.

According to the Spring/Summer 2006 issue of Milwaukee History, Burns and his fellow toy designers, Ed Wichman and Ray Wilcox, believed that they owned their designs. The three men went to the Playskool toy company in Chicago, hoping to sell 10 of their designs at $100 each. (Playskool, now part of Hasbro, was started by former Milwaukee teachers in 1928 and moved to Chicago in 1935.) The men were only offered $100—for all 10 designs.

“Since we had barely enough money to get down there, we took the hundred dollars and went home, and decided that we couldn’t compete with the commercial people,” Burns recalled in Milwaukee History.

Art after Retirement

In his spare time, Burns painted and exhibited his drawings and paintings, especially his watercolors, around the area. In a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article Burns explained, “I won a few prizes, but I was too busy earning a living to be able to promote an art career…”

But in retirement Burns found the time to paint and exhibit his work. In July 2002, 63 of Burn’s paintings were exhibited at the Alfons Gallery, located at the School Sisters of St. Francis convent at 1501 S. Layton Blvd. The watercolor and pastel exhibit, entitled Still Life at 90: The Paintings of George T. Burns, included paintings of covered bridges, lighthouses, beached fishing boats, and architectural landmarks.

Sister Barbaralie Stiefermann of the Alfons Gallery remembers Burns as a “dapper” gentleman. Many of Burns former students came to the exhibit, and “it was like a great reunion,” Stiefermann said. The first day of the opening was Burns’ 90th birthday and the next day he flew off to Greece with his niece for a vacation. According to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article, Burns sketched his way around Athens and the Greek islands with hopes of turning the sketches into watercolors. Asked why he chose watercolor as a medium, Burns told the Journal Sentinel, “I like the clarity of watercolors and also the ability they give me to get out and sketch out of doors.”

Involved in Life

Although Burns moved from Bay View in the late 1930s (after his marriage to wife, Melvada), his heart remained in the old Bay View neighborhood. He was active in the Bay View Historical Society, and according to member John Manke, “Burns was the main person on the slide programs at the society and prepared some of the programs for us to see. He had a wonderful personality and was always helpful in all that he did.”

A quotation by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow—“Art is long and time is fleeting”—appears next to Burns’ senior yearbook picture. Burns did indeed have a long art career, in both teaching and painting, but his life was not fleeting. Burns lived to the ripe old age of 97, passing on Jan. 2, 2009. His artwork lives on in exhibition and private collections. Nine months after his death, one of his watercolors, Jones Island, was shown at the Isle of Inspiration: Rediscovering Milwaukee’s Jones Island exhibit at West Bend’s Museum of Wisconsin Art.

Early evolution of Wisconsin’s largest yacht club

A blue-collar neighborhood is not an obvious location for a yacht club, but that didn’t stop Bay View. On Oct. 3, 1913, six Bay View men met at the home of J.W. Campbell on Bishop Avenue (now known as Wentworth Avenue) to sign the original charter of the South Shore Yacht Club, according to the club’s 75th anniversary yearbook.

The purpose of the club, according to the articles of incorporation, was to “encourage yacht building and naval architecture” and “to bring about closer fellowship among those having an interest in the art of yachting…”

The first clubhouse was a rented house at 2540 S. Shore Dr. owned by James R. Williams, a steel worker at the Illinois Steel Mill; but by April 23, 1915, the club had moved their meetings to Commodore William Barr’s residence at 2600 S. Shore Dr.

A Floating Clubhouse

Club member Daniel B. Starkey suggested that the club purchase an 1869 three-mast lumber schooner, the Lily E., and convert it to a floating clubhouse. In May 1915 the Lily E. was purchased, with the terms of $50 down and the $300 balance to be paid in one year. The Lily E. was then pulled from the mud of a Sturgeon Bay boneyard and towed to the Leathem & Smith dock in Sturgeon Bay for temporary repairs. Club member Edward Gillen organized the towing of the Lily E. to the foot of E. Nock Street in Bay View. The ship arrived on July 5, 1915.

The ship’s hold was converted to a large clubroom, a galley, men’s and ladies’ lavatories, locker rooms, and a den. The main deck was used for dancing and the cabin was used for a ladies’ reception room and officers’ quarters. A hurricane deck, built over the main deck, served as another dance floor.

In 1915 the yacht club membership split, with some members forming a new club, the Steel Mills Yacht Club.

The Lily E. clubhouse was well used by members for picnics, dances, regattas, and other gatherings. However, by the spring of 1921, the schooner had so deteriorated that the club’s fire insurance was cancelled. A decision was made to abandon the Lily E. and find a new clubhouse.

On Dec. 20, 1921, the South Shore Yacht club merged with the Steel Mills Yacht Club, reuniting the divided club membership. They kept the name South Shore Yacht Club. Members met at the old Steel Mills Yacht Club located at 2530 S. Shore Dr. (now razed), owned by the Illinois Steel Company. The following summer the club destroyed the Lily E. by setting it afire at its mooring. What remained of the incinerated schooner was then covered with landfill.

A Permanent Clubhouse

In 1925, the Illinois Steel Company reclaimed the Steel Mills Yacht Club building for company offices, causing the club to relocate. The sailing club’s next home was a welded steel barge moored at the foot of Nock Street. In October 1929 a fierce storm caused the barge to break free of its mooring, forcing the barge ashore and completely destroying it. The late George T. Burns remembered seeing the yacht club piano floating among the wreckage.

Thoughts turned to a new permanent clubhouse. The city of Milwaukee created land for the new clubhouse by extending the Lake Michigan shoreline at the foot of E. Nock Street, near the buried Lily E. The city dumped landfill of gravel and slag (a byproduct of ore smelting) into the lake. In essence, the city was reclaiming land that had been lost due to erosion decades before.

Largest in State

The original building is no longer recognizable due to additions constructed in the 1950s and ’60s. Extensive remodeling was done in the 1970s and ’80s.

The South Shore Yacht Club, the largest yacht club in Wisconsin, now stands behind security gates, installed in 1976 over the remains of Lily E.’s bow. Club membership is open to everyone, with no restrictions.

“At one time, the majority of our members all lived ‘up the hill,’” club member Bob Aring said. “Now less than 20 percent live in the 53207 Zip Code.”

There are 230 boats in the slips, another 100 boats on moorings, and rest are moored boats in a federally designated area and supervised by the Port of Milwaukee, Aring said.

Leading family’s estate still stands on Shore Drive

 

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