Thank You!
Wikipedia
Martin Drive "Back When"
Dave Johnson worked on the first Martin Drive website for many years, keeping the server at his home in the neighborhood.
Much of this new website content comes from his hard work. Thank you!
Much of this new website content comes from his hard work. Thank you!
Neighbors have worked on putting together a history of the neighborhood through library records, pictures, and oral history.
Their work on Martin Drive can be found on Wikipedia.
Their work on Martin Drive can be found on Wikipedia.
HISTORY
If you have any pictures and stories of the neighborhood, please e-mail them to raymond.duncan@gmail.com so they can be added to this website.
Click on a photo below in the photo galleries to enlarge.
Click on a photo below in the photo galleries to enlarge.
Pictures from Debbie Pagel's album (below) show what Pat's Mueller Office & Eat Cake! looked like years ago, followed by present day.
Check out this webpage. You can listen to interviews of people who used to live in the area.
From Radio Milwaukee:
In gathering history about Martin Drive, an interesting fact kept popping back up over and over again — the Milwaukee County Zoo once occupied the space where Washington Park now stands, across the street from the business district on Vliet Street. And apparently, the zoo had incredibly lax security, remaining open 24 hours a day for anybody in the mood for some late night fauna-inspection. So from my side of things, the challenge becomes how to paint a picture of that fact rather than merely stating it.
And because the storytelling gods always seems to smile on the Neighborhood Project (knock on wood), with the help of Pat Mueller, I managed to track down the Thaneys (of course, some of them are no longer Thaneys due to marriage). The Thaneys are grandchildren of Herman Militzer, a German immigrant who had converted the saloon on 43rd and Vliet into a grocery store back in prohibition times. So, what would a kindly grandfather do with produce that sat in the store a little too long? Why, give it to his rascally grandkids to feed wild animals, of course:
In pre-interviewing, Tom mentioned “feeding heads of cabbage to the hippos,” which unfortunately did not come out during the actual interview. However, that omission got my imagination churning on the endless of animal-produce combinations that must have occurred when the zoo was in Washington Park: badgers and beets, onions and ostriches, kohlrabi and koalas, tortoises and tomatillos…
The interview actually took place above the old Militzer grocery store (where Eat Cake! is located today), in an apartment the Thaneys’ grandparents once called home. Naturally, this sparked an avalanche of memories of their grandparents and the neighborhood:
Location: 4303 W Vliet Street, (now Pat's Office & Eat Cake)
Check out this webpage. You can listen to interviews of people who used to live in the area.
From Radio Milwaukee:
In gathering history about Martin Drive, an interesting fact kept popping back up over and over again — the Milwaukee County Zoo once occupied the space where Washington Park now stands, across the street from the business district on Vliet Street. And apparently, the zoo had incredibly lax security, remaining open 24 hours a day for anybody in the mood for some late night fauna-inspection. So from my side of things, the challenge becomes how to paint a picture of that fact rather than merely stating it.
And because the storytelling gods always seems to smile on the Neighborhood Project (knock on wood), with the help of Pat Mueller, I managed to track down the Thaneys (of course, some of them are no longer Thaneys due to marriage). The Thaneys are grandchildren of Herman Militzer, a German immigrant who had converted the saloon on 43rd and Vliet into a grocery store back in prohibition times. So, what would a kindly grandfather do with produce that sat in the store a little too long? Why, give it to his rascally grandkids to feed wild animals, of course:
In pre-interviewing, Tom mentioned “feeding heads of cabbage to the hippos,” which unfortunately did not come out during the actual interview. However, that omission got my imagination churning on the endless of animal-produce combinations that must have occurred when the zoo was in Washington Park: badgers and beets, onions and ostriches, kohlrabi and koalas, tortoises and tomatillos…
The interview actually took place above the old Militzer grocery store (where Eat Cake! is located today), in an apartment the Thaneys’ grandparents once called home. Naturally, this sparked an avalanche of memories of their grandparents and the neighborhood:
Location: 4303 W Vliet Street, (now Pat's Office & Eat Cake)
These are pictures of local businesses from the past.
Local Businesses "Back When"
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