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?

This Old House on 1 That Street

I generally don't drive, which often means that my knowledge of specific street names is limited to my immediate vicinity. My navigation relies much more on landmarks and directions, since I don't bother looking for street signs (I generally don't see them, anyway). But recently I've needed to accustom myself to the lay of the streets a bit more.

So if you're from Milwaukee I'll ask you this: do you know about where in Milwaukee this house was from?



Here's a hint: its address was 519 Astor Street. Not helpful? It's from near the intersection of Biddle Street and Astor Street. Still not helpful? That's because all of Milwaukee's urban planners aspire to be Hunter S. Thompson. The house's description may prove useful in figuring out this problem.

Milwaukee has gone through a series of street name changes, but the largest happened in 1930. Some streets were renamed, but most simply had a direction appended to them. Astor Street became North Astor Street. In addition, people couldn't pick whatever wacky address number they wanted (do you really want to live on 1 Bay Street next to 1 Aldrich Street?). Numbers were assigned according to a property's frontage (every 15' had a new number, every new block increased this number by 100). This house's address changed from 519 Astor Street to 913 North Astor Street.

Unfortunately, even having an address number and street name doesn't help us with this house. Keen visitors that click on my fancy links will already know the other problem. This house neighbored the intersection of Biddle and Astor. The problem being that Biddle Street became Kilbourn Avenue when Cedar and Biddle were widened and connected by a bridge over the Milwaukee river. The intersection of Astor and Biddle now encompasses the intersection of Kilbourn, Prospect and Astor.


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You know what will teach you streets pretty quick? Poring over fire liability maps of a city. Unfortunately, half those streets may not even exist anymore - like Biddle Street. The Sanborn Fire Insurance Map Company (talk about knowing your target market) created detailed, scale maps of thousands of American cities between 1867 and 1970. You can view black and white versions of these maps for Milwaukee online, but you may want the key.

Physically they're giant bound volumes about two feet square. With a scale of 1 inch to 50 feet, this means one page can show about 1000 feet on each side. Milwaukee is a rather large city, and the maps from 1910-1926 come in 6 volumes (about 20 giant bound books of maps). New volumes were ordered for expansions of the city limits, but the index map remains the same (which makes finding page numbers for modern streets not listed on the index that much more fun).

Aside from being unwieldy in size, the individual pages are a bit strange. Directional north is not explicitly at the top of the page; each page has its own compass rose to denote which way is north. Unlike the online versions mentioned above, the actual maps are color-coordinated with the key. Each color indicates a specific building material (and therefore a building's status as a potential fire hazard). And finally, in order to provide up-to-date fire hazard information, the company provided new versions of buildings and streets that could be pasted into the volume on hand. This kept the maps current, but isn't so helpful when you're looking for an older demolished house, since it's bound to be under 3 layers of pasted revisions. In older versions of the map the presence of gas and electrical lines is often marked as well (if I had been around in 1910 I'd get an electrical line to my house just so some lazy surveyor has to pencil in "Electric Line" on some giant map).

So where was that house from? It was located in downtown Milwaukee, where Kilbourn Avenue starts and the Regency House Condos now stand.


And maybe it's still there, like some sort of Morlock house.