Pleasant Valley Park on the west bank of the Milwaukee River was once one of the city’s most popular beer gardens. Owned by the Blatz brewery and visited by thousands, it featured elaborate landscaping, a restuarant, bandshell, pavilion, steamboat dock, and even a few cottages. Little remains to remind visitors of its glory days a century ago. Photo by Carl Swanson
Pleasant Valley Park, at the foot of East Concordia Avenue on the Milwaukee River, is a peaceful place. The band packed up and left a century ago, about the time the steamboats stopped calling at the park’s dock. A little later, the pavilion, pier, cottages, and bandshell were torn down and the rubble removed. Officially this is a Milwaukee County Park but you wouldn’t know it by looking at it. There are no signs, no parking area, no picnic benches or ball fields, nothing at all to suggest it had ever been anything other than a ravine filled with downed trees and garlic mustard.
But once this was one of Milwaukee’s best-known beer gardens:
“Blatz Park (“Pleasant Valley” before 1892) swarmed with picnickers in those days. Troops of large families from St. Casimir’s Parish, a mile south, regularly followed a makeshift marching band up Humboldt Avenue to the park, each family pulling a coaster wagon containing a picnic lunch. Steam-powered boats, sailing from a dock just above the North Avenue dam, pulled up periodically at the pier and discharged crowds of passengers. The park had a bandshell and later a restaurant. There were also cottages, often rented in the summer, by one account, to actors from a theatre downtown.” – From Riverwest: A Community History, by Tom Tolan, copyright 2003, Past Press, Milwaukee, WI.
A postcard view of the riverside pavilion at Blatz Park, as it appeared in the early 1900s. Carl Swanson collection
The Pleasant Valley Park beer garden opened in 1870, one of many in Milwaukee at the time. The city was home to a thriving population of German immigrants and local breweries adopted the old county idea of the beer garden and elevated it beyond anything ever seen in Germany. Michael Reilly’s history of the Schlitz Brewing Co., describes the era:
“The beer garden was an important gathering place for family groups, politicians, artists, and celebrities as early as the late 1840’s. The most pretentious beer gardens were extensive groves, selected for natural beauty and often enhanced by landscaping. Some featured exotic plants, artificial ponds, fountains, and rustic stairways descending into picturesque ravines. Conveniently placed benches and tables served by nimble footed waiters invited rest, quiet conversation and leisurely imbibing.”
The gardens faded around World War I. Tastes in entertainment had changed. Prohibition, followed by the rise of the automobile, put the final nails in the coffin. But in its day, Blatz Park was not to be missed. An early guidebook recommended it as part of a suggested one-day itinerary for sightseers to Milwaukee.
“Should time permit, cross the loveliest country roads to Pleasant Valley or Blatz Park across the River and take a supper there al fresco; and if you don’t vote that they can cook a game supper there to a turn, and understand all the etc’s, and that Milwaukee is a jolly place to pass one day in. it must be the fault of your liver.
“From Pleasant Valley you can, if you desire, float homeward in the moonlight down the river by boat to North Ave. bridge, where your carriage will await you, and bring you back to the city in the evening.” – From Caspar’s Guide to the City of Milwaukee, published 1904.
The Blatz estate continued to own the property until 1928. In announcing the sale of the land to the city, the June 8, 1928 edition of the Milwaukee Journal noted the beer garden was even then a distant memory and that a swimming school had occupied the park’s 790-foot river footage in more recent years. The newspaper article also contained this evocative quote from the real estate broker handling the sale:
Few traces remain of the famous early beer garden. Photo by Carl Swanson
“Few of the younger generation in the city realize that there is a spot in the heart of the city that has such beauty,” estate broker Anthony Grueninger told the paper. “However, all old-time Milwaukeeans will remember the days when Pleasant Valley was the recreation place for thousands of people.
“They will remember how father gathered the family on a Sunday, went to Whittaker’s at the North Avenue bridge and either rented a rowboat or boarded the small river steamer that made the trip to this beautiful spot.
“While father sat in the famous old pavilion as he quaffed a stein of foaming brew and listened to one of the many singing societies which usually gathered there, mother and the children sat or played about under the beautiful trees of the park.”
The sale of the land was, according to newspaper accounts of the time, intended to facilitate construction of a planned riverfront drive. The roadway was never built and Pleasant Valley Park eventually became part of Milwaukee County’s chain of riverfront parks, but was otherwise left alone to slowly revert to nature.
“All that remains is a hazy recollection of green and white cleanliness, of content and a sense of time standing still on a Sunday afternoon.” recalled the Milwaukee Sentinel in its April 3, 1955 edition.
In 2012, a beer garden, the first in 100 years, opened further up river in Estabrook Park. The public-private partnership was an immediate success.
But Pleasant Valley Park will continue to slumber. Its time in the spotlight is over.
A concrete curb marks what had been the park’s main entrance road, leading from East Concordia Avenue down the bluff to the park, tucked away in a ravine on the west bank of the Milwaukee River. Photo by Carl Swanson
Milwaukee Notebook 
What a great article. I lived on Weil Street just steps from here and never even knew it existed.
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Small world! I live on Weil Street, 3400 block. Thanks for the comment!
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I love your articles, Carl. Thanks so much!
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I think I know this place! I used to live on the tiny, one-block stretch of Gordon Place (next door to Tony Peters, who was Milwaukee’s infamous “cocaine king” in the 1980s). I used to walk down to the river at the end of my block, which I belt was the Concordia dead end. There was a biggish meadow at the foot of the hill, right on the river, and then a footpath along the river. I usually walked up to Kern Park so don’t know how much farther north the path went. But even though I could see the Capitol Drive bridge in the distance, down by the water I heard not one city sound. I could have been miles away from Milwaukee. It was beautiful and soul restoring. I never saw anyone else down there except for once in a really super cold winter there was a group of teenage boys playing hockey on a cleared-of-snow spot of ice on the river, which was wider and deeper then because of the North Avenue dam. But in the back of my mind I always worried a little about how isolated I was down there, like if a bad person was also aware of the path and decided to lurk there on the off chance that someone would come by, no one would ever hear me calling for help or find my body afterward. Luckily my worst-case imaginings never materialized!😄
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I just saw in the earlier comments that you live in the 3400 block of Weil. That was my block of North Gordon Place, too: 3400. I loved that whole area!
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