Old World Third Street Historic District

About this property

The Old World Third Street Historic District is the last relatively intact part of the original German retail district in Kilbourntown plat in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States. It contains examples of various styles of Victorian commercial architecture going back to 1855. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1987 and on the State Register of Historic Places in 1989. A permanent European settlement in what would become Milwaukee began in 1822 when Solomon Juneau built a cabin so he could run his trading post year-round. In treaties of 1831 and 1833 Native Americans ceded this land to the U.S. government. In 1835 when the land was surveyed and ready to sell, Byron Kilbourn bought the land west of the Milwaukee River that this district occupies and platted his Kilbourntown. Juneau platted a competing town across the river on the east - Juneautown. A third competing settlement, Walker's Point, lay south across the Menomonee River. It wasn't until 1846 that the three competing settlements formed the united city. Early settlers in the 1830s were mostly Yankees from New England, with some British, German, Irish, Norwegians, and Solomon Juneau's black cook, Joe Oliver. The first buildings were shanties and log cabins, then frame buildings: houses, stores, taverns, sawmills and shops. Two cream brick houses were built in 1836, and in 1840 a 3-story brick store at the corner of Third and Juneau which no longer exists. In 1840 a bridge was built to link Juneautown and Kilbourntown at Juneau Avenue. In that year the combined population of the three settlements was 1,692. Kilbourntown's first cluster of businesses was at the corner West Juneau and Old World 3rd Street. Third Street led to the Green Bay Road and Juneau connected to the Madison Road, so businesses established along those arteries. While early Kilbourntown had been dominated by Yankees, in the late 1840s other groups began to pour in, and German immigrants soon dominated Kilbourntown. By 1858 the district was a mix of retail shops, wholesale houses, and light manufacturing. During the Civil War some of the early frame shops were replaced by three and four-story brick business blocks with stylish ornamentation in the brickwork. The Bauer building at 1029-31 N. Old World 3rd Street is a 3-story cream brick Italianate-styled store built around 1858, with carved lintels above the windows and a dentilated cornice. The Pritzlaff Hardware Co. building at 1033 N. Old World 3rd Street is a 4-story cream brick Italianate building with the first three stories built in 1861 and the fourth added about 1890. In contrast with the Bauer building next door, this one has round-topped windows decorated with a keystone ornament, and the top of the building sports a pressed metal cornice in Queen Anne style, which was in vogue by 1890. Like many buildings in the district, the street-level storefront has been remodeled, but the upper stories survive much as when they were originally built.

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Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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