It looked like a fish out of water. Gleaming amid the dingy buildings and cluttered waterfront of the city’s Downtown in 1946, the Milwaukee Clipper stood out boldly in the urban landscape, a pint-sized ocean liner tied up at its humble home dock near the Water Street bridge.
Although it had the sleek lines of a cruiser, the Clipper first hit the water as a less glamorous craft. It was launched in 1904 as the Juniata, a steamship that provided regular freight and passenger service between Buffalo and Duluth for more than 30 years. The Juniata rarely saw Lake Michigan in its first incarnation.
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The ship was forced out of service by new safety requirements in 1937, but three years later, with a refurbished hull and a streamlined steel superstructure, the Juniata was reborn as the Milwaukee Clipper. The changes made the ship look more like a scaled-down Queen Mary than a traditional Great Lakes steamer.
The Clipper began to sail between Milwaukee and Muskegon, Michigan in 1941, a run it would make thousands of times in the next three decades. Featuring air-conditioned staterooms, a movie theater and a dance floor, the ship could accommodate 900 passengers and 120 of their automobiles. For legions of landlocked Midwesterners, a trip on the Clipper was the closest they would ever come to a high-seas pleasure cruise.
The ship’s second act lasted until 1970. Like a dowager queen at the end of her reign, the Clipper stopped carrying passengers that year and eventually made its way back to a permanent dock in Muskegon. Today, in a continuing state of restoration, the ship is a floating museum that rests directly across an inlet from the Lake Express ferry, a faster, sleeker expression of the same vision that brought the Clipper to life in 1940.
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK:
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The Federal Building (left) and the Wisconsin Gas headquarters were dominant landmarks on the eastern side of Downtown
in 1946. -
Built in 1896, the Goll & Frank dry goods warehouse is now The Renaissance, a mixed-use office building at 309 N. Water St.
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The Clipper’s forward smokestack is merely decorative, a design signature of the ship’s architect, George Sharp.
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Still in use, this railroad bridge carries the Amtrak mainline to Chicago.
IN COLLABORATION WITH THE MILWAUKEE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
