How the Milwaukee Public Museum's Streets of Old Milwaukee began, and how it has evolved

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Editor's note: This story is adapted from a Green Sheet feature first published July 21, 2015.

Milwaukee gets accused of living in the past. In 1965, we made sure that at least we could always stop by for a visit.

In January 1965, the then-new Milwaukee Public Museum, 800 W. Wells St., unveiled its first major permanent exhibit. Three years in the making, the Streets of Old Milwaukee was designed by artist Edward Green to capture the city in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

A visitor peeks into the optometrist's office in the Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit on its preview night in January 1965. The exhibit, meant to recreate Milwaukee during the late 1890s and early 1900s, has been one of the museum's most popular attractions since it opened.

In the years since, the exhibit, considered one of the first walk-through dioramas in the world, has been one of the museum's most popular attractions. When museum officials said in 2023 that the Streets of Old Milwaukee likely wouldn't make the move to the proposed new home for the museum, it generated a rush of sentiment for preserving the exhibit.

Here's a look at how the Streets of Old Milwaukee was created, and how it changed over the years.

How the Streets of Old Milwaukee was built

For one of the main attractions of the new Milwaukee Public Museum, which opened its doors in 1963, museum artists put together a mini-neighborhood, with five brick- and cedar-paved streets, illuminated by gaslights and lined with storefronts, offices and a few residences, using bits and pieces from Milwaukee's real past.

"Milwaukee police, fire and water departments dug into storage areas to donate old hydrants, call boxes and other official memorabilia," reported a Jan. 10, 1965, preview of the exhibit in The Milwaukee Journal.

The city's urban-renewal rush in the early 1960s provided plenty of raw material, too. Museum experts selected materials from demolished homes, businesses and streets to be reused in the exhibit.

A shot of the Charles Mader's restaurant addition to the Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit in 1966 at the public museum.

Among the stops on the Streets were the Usinger's sausage-making window, a nickelodeon that showed short silent films, a drugstore, a stable and a candy store.

Laab's Drugstore was one of the original stops in the Streets of Old Milwaukee when the exhibit opened in January 1965.

The Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit was popular from the start

When it finally opened in January 1965, the exhibit — part of the launching of the new museum, which had been in the Central Library from 1899 to 1963, and completed the move to the new address by 1967 — drew 7,300 visitors its first weekend. "We were mobbed," museum director Stephan F. de Borhegyi told The Journal.

From the start, one of the exhibit's most popular attractions was the grandma mannequin, rocking away on the front porch of a house on Grand Ave.

Granny rocks on her front porch in the Milwaukee Public Museum's Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit.

Creepy to some, soothing to others, Granny also was a target: In 1987, the museum had to replace the original after years of damage from patrons. Museum art director Robert G. Frankowiak told The Journal in 1987 that kids had thrown gravel and wads of gum at her face. And at least once, she was even attacked.

"They pushed her head around," Frankowiak told The Journal. "We found her with her hair disheveled."

New displays were added to the Streets of Old Milwaukee over its history

Over the years, several new attractions were added to the Streets of Old Milwaukee, from a stained-glass window shop in 1967 to the Watson Family Home, installed in 2000 and designed as a tribute to one of Milwaukee's first prominent Black families.

Mike Jeske, project designer for the new Watson Family House at the Milwaukee Public Museum, checks the fit of an upper window shortly before the exhibit, an addition to the Streets of Old Milwaukee, opened in February 2000.

In 2015, the museum shut down the Streets for nearly four months for more than $1 million in upgrades, from the addition of a 1905 streetcar to a new dress for Granny.

Guests get the feel of riding the street car down a historic street of Milwaukee during a sneak peek at the new Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit at the Milwaukee Public Museum in 2015.

Will the Streets of Old Milwaukee exhibit move to the new museum?

Last summer, the Milwaukee Public Museum unveiled designs for a new museum, to be built at North Sixth Street and West McKinley Avenue. Not long after, museum officials made it clear that some of the exhibits that were built into the Wells Street building would not be moved completely to the new space, but suggested that some "MPM favorites from the current exhibits and collection" will.

The museum has said it will unveil details of what will be in the new building later this year. Construction is expected to start in late 2023.

Sophie Carson of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel staff contributed to this report.

More:As Milwaukee Public Museum prepares for new home, what current exhibits matter to you?

View Comments