The Town of Lake was formerly a
town
A town is a human settlement. Towns are generally larger than villages and smaller than cities, though the criteria to distinguish between them vary considerably in different parts of the world.
Origin and use
The word "town" shares an o ...
in
Milwaukee County
Milwaukee County is located in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. At the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, the population was 939,489, down from 947,735 in 2010. It is both the most populous and most densely populated county in Wisconsin, and th ...
,
Wisconsin
Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...
, United States, which existed from January 2, 1838 to April 6, 1954.
Geography
After 1840, using current street names, the Town of Lake encompassed the area bordered by Greenfield Ave to the north,
Lake Michigan
Lake Michigan is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the east, its basin is conjoined with that o ...
to the east, College Avenue to the south and 27th Street to the west. These areas now make up the cities of
St. Francis and
Cudahy as well as part of the South Side of the City of
Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee i ...
.
History
On January 2, 1838, the
territorial legislature divided the County into two townships: the
Town of Milwaukee, encompassing everything north of the present Greenfield Avenue, and the Town of Lake, encompassing everything South of the present Greenfield Avenue; "and the polls of election shall be opened at the house of Elisha Higgins, in said town." On March 8, 1839, a new Town of Kinnikennick was created, encompassing the western part of Lake (later the Towns of
Greenfield
Greenfield or Greenfields may refer to:
Engineering and Business
* Greenfield agreement, an employment agreement for a new organisation
* Greenfield investment, the investment in a structure in an area where no previous facilities exist
* Greenf ...
and
Franklin); and on August 13, 1840, the south portion of the Town of Lake was split off to form the town of
Oak Creek. As of the 1840
census
A census is the procedure of systematically acquiring, recording and calculating information about the members of a given population. This term is used mostly in connection with national population and housing censuses; other common censuses inc ...
, the population of the Town of Lake (then including Oak Creek) was 418.
According to the 1855 Wisconsin State Census, the Town of Lake's population was 2,127, with 1,308 of them having foreign birth.
The next diminution of the town took place in 1879 when
Bay View incorporated as a village. Milwaukee annexed the north portions of the town soon after, and Bay View voted to allow Milwaukee to annex it in 1887.
Patrick Cudahy
Patrick Cudahy Jr. (); March 17, 1849 – July 25, 1919) was an American industrialist in the meat packing business and a patriarch of the Cudahy family.
Biography
Cudahy was born on St. Patrick's Day in Callan, County Kilkenny, Ireland. A few m ...
bought land in the area in 1892 for his meatpacking business. In 1895, this area was incorporated as the
Village of Cudahy. After becoming a city, Cudahy later annexed lands south to the border of
South Milwaukee.
In July 1951, the area along Lake Michigan north of Cudahy and south of Milwaukee incorporated as the
City of St. Francis in order to prevent annexation from Milwaukee and keep profits from the Lakeside Power Plant in the area.
The City of Milwaukee annexed the remaining portion of the town on April 6, 1954, at which point the town ceased to exist. The City of Milwaukee grew by about 15,000 people overnight.
As part of President
Franklin D. Roosevelt's Public Works Administration
New Deal
The New Deal was a series of programs, public work projects, financial reforms, and regulations enacted by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the United States between 1933 and 1939. Major federal programs agencies included the Civilian Con ...
, an octagonal tower was built in 1938. It was to be the Lake City Hall and doubled as a water tower. This landmark features
Art Deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unit ...
details such as empire lines on the façade, scallops above the entrance and stair railings with chevron designs in them. No longer needed by the neighboring Department of Water Works treatment plant to equalize water pressure, the internal tank was abandoned and the building updated for use as municipal office space in 2001.
Town Lake Tower
In 1993, the Howard Avenue Water Purification Plant became the source of the Milwaukee Cryptosporidium outbreak, the largest documented waterborne disease outbreak in United States history.
See also
*Neighborhoods of Milwaukee
The neighborhoods of Milwaukee include a number of areas in southeastern Wisconsin within the state's largest city at nearly 600,000 residents.
Two residents of the same neighborhood may describe different neighborhood boundaries, which could ...
Notes
External links
Milwaukee Neighborhoods Map
(PDF)
Town of Lake LandmarkNGS survey of the towerTown of Lake in Milwaukee Neighborhoods Guide from UWM Libraries
{{authority control
Neighborhoods in Milwaukee
History of Milwaukee
Former populated places in Wisconsin
1836 establishments in Michigan Territory
South Side, Milwaukee