by Peter Schmidtke / photograph by Peter Di Antoni
From the living room of their two-story home on Holton Street where they have lived for 21 years, Luis and Ada Rivera recount the turn of events that led them to claim their own part of the American Dream.
by Tom Tolan – Part 4 of 6. (en Espanol)
“Nueva Yores.” They meant New York, the main destination for people on the Island, but the term became the popular shorthand for all destinations on the mainland. In time, everyone in Puerto Rico had at least one family member in “Nueva Yores.” Milwaukee’s first major Puerto Rican neighborhood was established in the late 1940s. It was located just northeast of downtown, in an area of older homes and apartment buildings bounded roughly by Milwaukee, Van Buren, State, and Lyon Streets.
by Tom Tolan – Part 3 of 6 in a series
In the early 1960s, St. Elizabeth’s Catholic Church — now St. Martin de Porres Catholic Church, at 128 W. Burleigh — was a relatively thriving parish, with a school attended by more than 1,000 children. Most parishioners were of German ancestry — many descended from “St. E’s” founders — or Polish families who had migrated from the east side of Holton. African-Americans were a definite presence, but they were less numerous in the parish than in the neighborhood. Fewer than 10 percent of the 1,056 pupils at St. Elizabeth’s in 1963 were black, and most of their families could be classified as middle-class.
by Jeff Johnson – en espanol
On almost any evening at Club Caribe, or Club 99, or the Barceloneta Lounge, groups of four quiet men hunker over tables dedicated to dominoes. This ancient game of Chinese origin has a passionate following among the Hispanic residents of Riverwest. And not unlike the bowling leagues that grew up at the Polish Falcon from Polish interest in ten pins, a domino league meets on Sundays to play the “bones.” Twenty taverns, ten from the Milwaukee area and ten from the Chicago area, send teams with as many as 150 people participating.
Excerpt from Chapter 2 of Riverwest: A Community History
by Tom Tolan
Part 2 of 6 in a series.
It is 4:30 a.m. on what will be a warm Friday in early autumn, 1920. Fourteen-year-old Clem Doberneck is one of the first in the neighborhood to rise. He eats breakfast with his father, who must catch an early streetcar to his job at the Miller Brewery, and by 5 a.m. is out of his family’s Booth Street house, beginning his morning rounds. From Locust Street to Reservoir Avenue, between Richards Street and the river, he walks from streetlight to streetlight, turning off the gas. Gradually, the sky becomes lighter….
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