Milwaukee Trivia Collection - Back to the Future Edition

People clamor for shorter articles, so I present the first in a series of Milwaukee-oriented trivia collections randomly organized into arbitrary themes. Today: I link Milwaukee's history with Back to the Future because of a note listing the time and date a building was struck by lightning.


Ten Years Early; One DeLorean Short


Flux capacitor not fluxing and out of plutonium? The Wells Building on Wisconsin Avenue was struck by lightning on July 9th, 1945 at 3:45pm. Unfortunately old ladies won't be handing out fliers asking you to save the clocktower; there aren't any clock faces on the building.

Thinking of speeding down Wisconsin Avenue in order to hit a metal wire at 88 miles per hour? Milwaukee's mass transit might have something to say about that. Not only would you have to contend with an abundance of streetcar wires, you'd also have the streetcars themselves, which would still be around for nearly a decade.


"Tab? I can't give you a tab unless you order something."

Putting aside the fact that Marty orders a drink marketed towards women, Tab did not exist until 1963. Coincidentally (in the realm of missing beverages), Milwaukee didn't have any taverns on record in the 1920s. Still want to wet your whistle? The Milwaukee city directories can point you to page after page of soda fountains.


Road names? Where we're going we don't need... road names.

There's plenty of dispute over the origin of the city of Milwaukee's name. But many of the streets have unique stories as well. Some changes came through convention, some came through history, and some came because urban planners like trying to confuse Polish immigrants.

As mentioned previously, Milwaukee went through many street renaming phases, but the most extensive happened in 1930. Almost every East-West street in East Milwaukee had a different name before the 1930s. Directional indicators were appended to street names (making something like Wisconsin Avenue into East Wisconsin Avenue and West Wisconsin Avenue - or something more fun like changing Aldrich Street into East Bay Street and South Bay Street). Unfortunately, they also decided to move the numbered streets as well.


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The city of Milwaukee does not have a Main Street (although Brown Deer Road becomes Main Street in Waukesha County). Broadway was formerly Main Street, before the name was changed in 1871.


The only reasonable explanation is that it's the main street to use to get out of the city, right?