Quiet is one word to describe Milwaukee’s downtown lakefront in the early 1940s. Today’s bustling place was completely undeveloped during World War II. Where Henry Maier Festival Park, Milwaukee Art Museum and Discovery World now draw hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, all Milwaukee residents had then was a few shabby baseball fields and a bleak, rocky shoreline.
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At the time this scene was shot, the lakeshore was undergoing one of many changes: After being submerged for centuries, the Chicago & North Western Railroad began filling in the lake in the early 1870s to build tracks and prevent erosion.
In 1927, Maitland Field opened as a runway for small planes, and planes replaced the railroads. Six years later, the Great Depression prevented local aviators from flying, and the lakefront became the home of the Milwaukee Midsummer Festival, a proto-summer festival that offered a week of free entertainment each year from 1933 to 1941, drawing crowds of more than a million at its peak.
World War II brought an abrupt end to the festival, but this aerial photo records the tranquility that followed. The lakefront became lively again, but at a leisurely pace that is typical of Milwaukee. Maitland Field reopened in 1945, but was replaced by a Nike anti-aircraft missile site in 1956. The War Memorial Center opened in 1957, followed by Meier Festival Park in 1970, and then a flurry of activity with the museum’s Calatrava addition in 2001, Discovery World in 2006 and Lakeshore State Park in 2007.
It took half a century, but the downtown lakefront has been completely transformed. What was once a small playground the size of a baseball field is now a cultural theme park and one of the state’s top tourist destinations.
Look closer:
The Wisconsin Telephone Company Building, completed in 1930, was designed by noted local architect Alexander Eschweiler. City Hall was the tallest building on Milwaukee’s skyline until it was surpassed by the First Wisconsin (now U.S. Bank) Center in 1973. The Chicago & North Western Station dominated the eastern edge of downtown from 1889 until its demolition in 1968. The Elks Club, built in 1927, was demolished in 1971 to make way for an expanding Northwestern Mutual campus. Buena Vista Flats (1909, now The Cudahy) and Cudahy Tower (1929) started a trend for luxury lakefront living.
In partnership with the Milwaukee County Historical Society
This article is part of the May issue of Milwaukee Magazine, available on newsstands now or at milwaukeemag.com/shop . Subscribe to be the first to receive the latest issue.
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