The scene resembles a college campus at first glance. At the center is a veritable Old Main, anchoring what might be a small but distinguished liberal arts school, one like Wisconsin’s own Ripon College or Lawrence University. All that’s missing to complete the picture is students.
Appearances are deceptive. The tower building was indeed called Old Main, but it served soldiers, not students. The campus was designed not for tender freshmen but for disabled Union veterans of the Civil War. When these wounded warriors hobbled home, there was no safety net to catch them. Those without support networks were left to fend for themselves, and the result was a legion of homeless veterans. Touched by their plight, a hardy group of local women opened a temporary place of “rest and refreshment” in Downtown Milwaukee in 1864.
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Determined to establish a permanent home, the women held a “Great Fair” in June of 1865 that netted $110,000 – more than $2.3 million in today’s dollars. Offered as seed money, those funds convinced federal authorities to develop one of America’s first three “national asylums” for “disabled volunteer soldiers” on 410 acres just west of Milwaukee. The first veterans arrived in 1867, Old Main was built in 1869, and the resident population of the National Soldiers Home climbed steadily to over 2,000 men.
In the century that followed, the government’s focus shifted from residential care for the disabled to health care for all veterans. As the mammoth VA complex rose on nearby National Avenue in the 1960s, the Soldiers Home’s original buildings were gradually abandoned to the elements. The prospect of losing such a distinguished complex was unthinkable to the Home’s supporters. After a series of false starts, the thoroughly restored Soldiers Home reopened in 2021 as a residence for homeless and at-risk veterans – precisely what it was designed to do 150 years earlier.
TAKE A CLOSER LOOK
- Old Main was designed by Edward Townsend Mix, Milwaukee’s leading architect at the time.
- Gothic windows and multi-colored slate roofs were two E.T. Mix trademarks.
- Old Main was a dormitory, but the complex also included a library, a theater, a chapel and a beer hall.
- Some of the Home’s original trees are still standing.
- Winding carriage paths in a picturesque setting attracted thousands of visitors annually.
IN COLLABORATION WITH MILWAUKEE COUNTY HISTORICAL SOCIETY
