Surely a more desolate, down-to-the-heel, slipshod-looking place could scarcely be found than Milwaukee in October 1838. – From a speech by banker and activist E. D. Holton, Nov. 22, 1858
An odd location for a town … a greater part of what is already laid out … being under water. – Author unattributed, in The Yeoman newspaper, 1837
The pioneers who came … were convinced … here was the site of a great city. Possibly Chicago might some day become a dangerous rival, but that was extremely doubtful. – Laurence M. Larson, “Sectional Elements in the Early History of Milwaukee,” scholarly article, 1908
Conservatism and caution are too strongly entrenched in her counting-rooms and factories for her to hope to enter into active competition with the proverbial dash and enterprise of Chicago. – William Willard Howard, Harper’s Weekly, July 18, 1891
The natural beauty of your metropolis … is attested by your pleasant streets and handsome homes. But its … manufactures and its trade demonstrate that its citizens have not been content with beauty alone. – President Grover Cleveland, Milwaukee, October 1887
Your products last year amounted to $142 million which were carried upon every sea and to most of the ports of the world. – President William McKinley, Milwaukee, October 1899
There are many hundreds of places in Chicago, Cincinnati and St. Louis where Milwaukee beer is sold; but … few if any places in Milwaukee where a person may slake his thirst upon lager other than the home manufacture. – San Francisco Daily Evening Bulletin, Oct. 13, 1880
There are 2,200 saloons in Milwaukee, and 1,000 to 1,500 would be enough. – 1919 report to U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary
Prohibition is not being enforced, because the brewing interests had too many ramifications in the business and social life of the town. – New York Times, Dec. 21, 1919
As German as possible. There are Lutheran churches in the city seventy-five years old, in which the sermons have always been preached in German and are preached in German even now. – Ibid
The best dressers lived on the south side. At that time (the 1860s) Prospect Avenue was a back street and cordwood was dumped in front of the houses, where men from the old house of correction, wearing balls and chains, used to saw and split it. – William Francis Hooker, Glimpses of an Earlier Milwaukee, 1930
The vast, burdened Polish district of the South Side … the huge dome of the Polish cathedral rises like a giant bubble from the laboring sea of roofs of the workingmen, badly housed, two and three families in a cottage whose tidy exterior falsely witnesses to well-being. – Playwright Zona Gale, Good Housekeeping, March 1910
Ah, Milwaukee. I got my bearings there. The rest of my life has been the unrolling of a scene that started in Wisconsin. – Poet Carl Sandburg, Historical Messenger, June 1953
When I was growing up (in the 1940s) it was predominantly Polish and German… when people got their paychecks, everybody was out drinking. Always a lot of fights, boisterous stuff on weekends … a lot of bars and … baker shops. – Baseball player Tony Kubek, milwaukeemagazine.com, September 2008
I can incite a riot faster than anyone. I can’t incite nothing in Milwaukee. I could crawl on my knees, I couldn’t get three lines in the paper. – St. Louis Hawks owner Ben Kerner, who moved the basketball team from Milwaukee, Sports Illustrated, Oct. 24, 1960
The kind of acting I used to enjoy no longer exists because your prime consideration is the budget, running time, the cost – and whether they’ll understand it in Milwaukee. – Actor Dirk Bogarde, 1979
The fact that the city had so many ethnic neighborhoods … It makes one very open-minded. – Cookbook author Patricia Wells, milwaukeemagazine.com, September 2008
Say, is that where they make the beer? – Prince Phillip, during the 1958 dedication of the St. Lawrence Seaway
Chicago is a pompous Milwaukee. – Writer Leonard L. Levinson, Left-Handed Dictionary, 1963
