Schlitz Brewing Co.

Book contains favorite posts from Milwaukee Notebook

Nearly 100 attended the book launch event for “Lost Milwaukee” April 24th at Milwaukee’s Boswell Book Company. Photo by John Swanson

We did it! Thanks to The History Press, the all-time best posts from Milwaukee Notebook – rewritten and expanded – are now collected in the new book Lost Milwaukee. The 42 essays and more than 70 images cover a broad range of topics, including:

In the waning days of World War II, a duck named Gertie built a nest in downtown Milwaukee and became a national sensation.
A popular bike path was once the route of one of the world’s fastest steam-powered passenger trains.
The last days of the Schlitz brewing empire in Milwaukee.
Women employed in a World War I munitions factory worked in their bloomers because the machinery made long dresses hazardous.
Today’s Estabrook Park was once a massive quarry and the home of the world’s largest producer of natural cement.
A nearly forgotten Milwaukee River park was a popular beer garden.
One-hundred years ago, excursion steamboats ran on the upper Milwaukee River.
For decades the rickety-looking Wells Street viaduct provided a thrilling ride for trolley passengers.
In 1859, Abraham Lincoln’s visit to Milwaukee included fiery rhetoric – and an encounter with a sideshow strongman.
The story of the lost canal under a busy city street.

From beer barons to chocolate makers, from a courthouse statue locals said resembled a drunken dancing girl to an ice cream run that led to the founding of Evinrude outboard engines, Lost Milwaukee is a fascinating glimpse into the city’s past. Click here for more information on this new book!

[From the Acknowledgments section of Lost Milwaukee] “Lastly, I wish to thank those who have followed my blog and shared their love for Milwaukee. This book would not have been possible without their support, comments and suggestions.”

East Side tunnel to nowhere

Built more than a century ago, this stone tunnel portal in the east bluff of the Milwaukee River is near the intersection of North Cambridge Avenue and Hampshire Street. Partly filled in and heavily vandalized, it remains impressive — and mysterious. Carl A. Swanson photo

There is a mystery in Cambridge Woods Park on the east bank of the Milwaukee River — an ancient tunnel made from carefully cut and fitted stone blocks and large enough to drive a truck through.

From its portal in a bluff at the foot of Hampshire Street, the tunnel extends eastward under the Oak Leaf Trail only to end abruptly at a modern concrete wall about 60 feet inside the entrance.

Who built it? And for what purpose? (more…)

Century-old dam is a reminder of Milwaukee’s up-river icehouses

This partially collapsed timber dam across the Milwaukee River north of Locust Street is all that remains of the Schlitz Brewing Company's ice-harvesting operation. Carl Swanson photo

This century-old partially collapsed timber dam across the Milwaukee River north of Locust Street is all that remains of the Schlitz Brewing Company’s ice-harvesting operation in Milwaukee’s Riverwest neighborhood. Carl Swanson photo

There is a fascinating reminder of Riverwest’s past hidden in plain sight in the Milwaukee River just north of the Locust Street bridge. Here logs across the river trace the remains of the Schlitz icehouse dam. The dam is over a century old, but the reason for Schlitz building its icehouses here dates back even further – all the way to late 1878 when this area was largely open country.

(more…)

One nation, united by beer

In 1888, Milwaukee’s Jos. Schlitz Brewing Company distributed this 15 x 26-inch chromolithograph poster. Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-pga-04220 (digital file from original print).

According to the caption supplied by the Library of Congress, “the man on the left looks like what Joseph Schlitz might have looked like had he been alive at the time of this advertisement. The other man may be a representative of ‘P.M. Ohmeis & Co.’”

Benjamin Harrison

Far be it from me to argue with the Library of Congress, but its caption is obviously wrong and kind of weird. “What Joseph Schlitz might have looked like had he been alive at the time.” Really? I guess nothing says, “Drink up!” like an artificially aged dead beer baron.

This broadsheet was printed in 1888, a presidential election year. The man at the left in the poster is the Republican candidate, Benjamin Harrison. The man in the center of the poster is his opponent, the Democrat incumbent president Grover Cleveland.

The Schlitz Brewing Co. was making the humorous point that good beer is one thing everyone can agree on.

Grover Cleveland

Cleveland narrowly won the popular vote that year but Harrison won the electoral college by a substantial majority (233 to 168 votes) and consequently became the 23rd president of the United States.

But don′t shed any tears for Cleveland. He served as president twice. He defeated Harrison four years later, making Cleveland both the 22nd and 24th president – the only one to serve non-consecutive terms in office. You can win a lot of barroom bets knowing that bit of trivia.

The idea of these two hanging out and having a few beverages together is not so far fetched. It rained at Harrison′s inauguration. Outgoing President Cleveland not only attended the ceremony, he held an umbrella over Harrison’s head while he took the oath of office. Carl_sig

[From the Acknowledgments section of Lost Milwaukee] “Lastly, I wish to thank those who have followed my blog and shared their love for Milwaukee. This book would not have been possible without their support, comments and suggestions.”

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