City Streets
11 Short Streets With Curious Names
All on the East Side. Four from Sir Walter Scott novels and a couple Harvard connections.
Get a daily rundown of the top stories on Urban Milwaukee
All on the East Side. Four from Sir Walter Scott novels and a couple Harvard connections. Back to the full article.
Photos - Page 2
Dang, now we’ll have to go back and read those Waverley novels.
Thankgoodness they are out of copyright and you can download them on your tablet.
Thomas Gaudynski
Carl: What is the history of Kisslich Place (39th-40th between Vliet and Cherry Streets), in the distant past, a site for numerous shady adolescent activities, including by “M” whose reputation was to be willing to do anything for anybody for a Granpa Graf’s Root Beer?
Carl, thanks a lot. I have lived in The Sterling since shortly after it was opened in 2006, and we have all wondered for years where Royall Place came from. I sent a link to your story out to about half the building!
I have also wondered about Albion, Curtis, et al, for most of my life. You’re a champ. I lived for a long time on Warren Ave., too, and have always wondered who that street was named after.
Great article, thanks for doing all this research!
For all you street name lovers, many of your questions about their origins can be found in Carl Baehr’s Milwaukee Streets: The Stories Behind Their Names (1995) and available at most local libraries. By the way, Carl is working on an expanded second edition, which will probably be out next year.
@ frank a schneiger
I am working on the second edition of my street name book and have included the updated entry for Kisslich Place below. I hope “M” didn’t have to do anything too distasteful to get his root beer.
KISSLICH PLACE
1400 North, between 3900 and 4000 West
Origin: Washington Park
Reinhold and Maria Palling Kiesslich, Austrian immigrants, bought the land that now includes Kisslich Place in the late 1880s, when Reinhold was a shipping clerk at the Pabst Brewing Company. In 1905, nine years after Reinhold died, Maria subdivided their land as the Kisslich Subdivision. In 1927, the street renaming commission named this alley, using the subdivision spelling rather than the family spelling. It is one of only a few alleys in the city that has a name.
The Kiesslichs arrived in the United States in 1871 with two of their children. They had five more children before Reinhold died at age 57 in 1896. Maria lived until 1933 when she was 87. The couple is buried in Union Cemetery.
@ Keith Prochnow
Thanks for the kind words. Below is the entry for Warren Avenue for the second edition of my street name book.
WARREN AVENUE
1200 East, between 1500 and 2000 North
Origin: Lower East Side
In 1884 the city passed an ordinance that changed Doty Street to Warren Avenue. Two theories have been advanced for whom it was named. One says the street was named for Nathaniel Warren, who owned a marble yard on Broadway forty years before. No Nathaniel Warren, with or without a marble yard, shows up on any city directories of the time.
Another idea is that it honors a Revolutionary War patriot, Joseph Warren. Judging by the city’s naming habits, the well-known Joseph Warren, the Revolutionary Warren, is more likely. The city tended to rename streets for more prominent people, either local or national, just as they named LaFayette Place for another Revolutionary War figure nine years earlier. Joseph Warren, the patriot, died at the Battle of Bunker Hill at the age of 34 in 1775.
Carl: Thanks Carl. This is great stuff. Regarding “M.” “M” was a “she,” not a “he,” and I think I would leave it by simply saying that she was good for Granpa Graf’s business, a lot of Root Beers, but turned out okay in the end, a good Catholic girl, more or less.
Fascinating stuff, Carl,
Tom and Karen (across the street from George and Barb)
Fascinating stuff, Carl,
Tom and Karen (across the street from George and Barb)