COMMERCE

Port Washington is exceptionally fortunate in still having a largely intact and economically viable historic downtown core, which is roughly bounded by Grand Ave. to the south, Franklin St. to the east, Jackson St. to the north, and Milwaukee St. to the West. This core contains individual resources that reflect practically the entire historic evolution of the non-industrial commercial aspects of the city's history, the bulk of them being located on Franklin St. and on Grand Ave. In addition, there is also a second, though much smaller commercial center located on W. Grand Ave. near its point of intersection with the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad tracks. Together, these two areas contain the vast majority of the surviving historic resources in Port Washington that were associated with retail functions and with the delivery of goods and services in the city before the end of World War II.

Both of these locations evolved for much the same reason that the city as a whole did; proximity to means of transportation. The downtown core, being older, grew up where it did because it lies adjacent to the place where Sauk Creek empties into Lake Michigan. Lake Michigan was the critical element because the shipping traffic on the Lake was, in the 1830s—1860s, the only reliable means of transporting large quantities of goods and large numbers of people to and from this area in the period before adequate overland roads and later, railroads, were developed. Sauk Creek, meanwhile, was a source of water power for the village, its lower eastern end being the logical place for the construction of saw mills and flour and grist mills and other industries that required water for power or manufacturing. The confluence of transportation access and a power source made the new community a success and soon brought roads into the village from other communities in need of these resources.

One of the most important of these new roads was N. Wisconsin Street, which began within the downtown core as Franklin Street and then turned into Wisconsin Street as it crested the north bluff on its way out of town towards the city of Sheboygan to the north. Another of the most important roads that developed started as Grand Avenue within the downtown core. It then ran west towards Saukville three miles to the west and to points beyond. This road soon became the principal entrance into Port Washington from the developing farm country west of the city so it was not surprising that when the north-south running railroad tracks of the Milwaukee, Lakeshore & Western Railroad finally came to Port Washington after great travail in 1873, the place where they crossed W. Grand Ave. became a natural focus for development. The commercial buildings that developed around this point of intersection served both those customers from outside the village who were intent on using the railroad and those within the village who chose to build residences on the flat uplands surrounding the depot and industrial enterprises within the corridor flanking the railroad tracks.

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The first buildings in the new village developed by Wooster Harrison and his companions in 1835 were of frame construction and were probably very simple examples of the Front Gable and Side Gable vernacular forms.(1) It appears that about five or six of these buildings were built in that year and immediately thereafter and surviving accounts suggest that they did multiple duty as residences, offices, stores and lodging places, as was typical of that time and place. When Harrison returned to Port Washington in 1843, the few surviving buildings from his first attempt at city building were promptly put to use and the new buildings that were built were probably very similar in design and size at first. Before long, though, buildings built expressly for commercial purposes began to appear. Many of these were the same frame construction vernacular form types as the ones built by Harrison, but others were built of cream brick that came from the brickyard established in the place by Woodruff & Richards in 1846, known as the North Brick Yard. As a result, the first commercial streetscapes in the downtown, which had already begun to focus on the north end of Franklin Street, were a mixture of mostly frame and brick buildings of usually modest size.

None of the pioneer frame construction commercial buildings erected in Port Washington now survive, fire and progress having done their work too well. Fortunately, fourteen of the brick commercial buildings built in the 1850s still exist up and down the length of Franklin St., including several fine and now quite rare examples of Federal Style buildings located on the west side of the 300 block of N. Franklin St. (317, 319-323, and 327 N. Franklin St.), the rest being good Italianate style and Commercial Vernacular form commercial buildings.(2) By 1881, the County History published in that year could note that "The village contains some fifty business houses, the majority of which are substantial buildings, of brick and stone."(3) Noticeable by their absence today, however, are buildings built in the 1860s and 1870s, there being only two survivors each from these two decades, which suggests that either fewer buildings were built during these years or that they have experienced a higher rate of attrition.

Interestingly, for reasons that are not yet clear, lots on the upper blocks of Franklin St. were clearly the favored location for the city's larger and more expensive early brick commercial buildings. Sanborn-Perris maps show that even by 1885, when the village population had reached 1500, nearly all the buildings below (south) of Main St. were still small one and occasionally two-story wood frame buildings. Perhaps this was due to the proximity of the lower blocks with Sauk Creek and the possibility of flooding or perhaps it was due to the fact that Charles Miller's tannery was located at the bottom of the street on the creek, perhaps not the most pleasant of neighbors. By the 1880s, though, the number of newer brick buildings on the street was growing and starting to extend south down the street towards Grand Ave. Today, nothing is left of the early frame buildings, all the ones on the east side of Franklin St. between Grand Ave. and Main St. in particular having been destroyed in the great Wisconsin Chair Co. fire of 1899, which totally destroyed the Chair Co. factory, in the process doing a million dollars damage to itself and to the city.(4)

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By the beginning of the 1890s, though, real changes were apparent on Franklin St. and on Grand Ave. and it was during this decade that many of the buildings were built on these streets that are now among the showpieces of the downtown. Included among the list of 1890s buildings built on Franklin St. during that decade are such Queen Anne Style standouts as: the Michael Weyker Building (314 N. Franklin St.), built in 1894 on the site of the old Ozaukee Co. Malt Co.; the Michael Bink Building (231 N. Franklin St.), built in 1891; the Wilson Hotel, (200-202 N. Franklin St.), also built in 1891 on the site of the old Union Hotel. Similar changes also occurred on E. and W. Grand Ave. as well, the new Queen Anne style buildings on that street including: the commercial buildings at 100 E. Grand Ave., built between 1893 and 1898; the commercial building at 137-139 W. Grand Ave., built between 1898-1904; the Hoffman House Hotel (200 W. Grand Ave. NRHP), built in 1895; and the Ed. Lutzen Saloon and Hotel (201 W. Grand Ave.), built in 1899.

The principal reason for this outburst of building activity during the 1890s was the development and subsequent success of the Wisconsin Chair Co. in Port Washington in 1889. A similar factor contributed to the growth of the W. Grand Ave. commercial district that is still centered on the 400-600 blocks of the avenue. This was the establishment and growth of the Gilson Manufacturing Co. factory (215 S. Park St.) in 1894, located to the south of Grand Ave. within the railroad corridor. The growth of this factory had a similar affect on its surrounding area because it suddenly introduced a large number of people that needed goods and services into an area that did not yet have the means to supply them. The result was another, albeit smaller, building boom that resulted in the construction of the Queen Anne style commercial building at 484 W. Grand Ave., built between 1892 and 1904; the commercial building at 537 W. Grand Ave., built between 1892 and 1898; and led to the expansion of the now demolished Boerner Bros. Department Store at ca.551 W. Grand Ave., originally built in 1890 and expanded later in the decade.

Ironically, even the destruction of the Chair Co. factory (which backed up against the buildings located on the east side of the 100 and 200 blocks of N. Franklin St.) in the fire of 1899 wound up improving the downtown by making previously occupied lots on N. Franklin St. available for new fire-resistant brick and stone buildings. Fortunately for the city, the decision to rebuild the factory on its original site meant that the status quo could be maintained and what might have been a disaster for the city and one with long-term consequences, was instead perceived as an opportunity. By 1910, most of the lots on N. Franklin St. that had been emptied by the fire had new buildings on them built out of stone, concrete block, or brick, and designed in later styles such as the Richardsonian Romanesque Revival (114 and 118 N. Franklin streets) or the Neoclassical Revival (122 N. Franklin St.). By the end of the decade, other buildings were also being built that were designed in the Twentieth Century Commercial Style and belief in the future growth of the community was also causing some of the street's buildings to be replaced by larger, more modern buildings that were responding to changes in retail practices. The most notable of these were the new Boerner Bros. Department Store at 211 N. Franklin St., built in 1910, and the R. Stelling & Co. General Store at 123-125 N. Franklin St., built in 1909.(5)

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And yet, the optimism that was responsible for these new developments was soon to be tempered by economic reality. Although the city's commercial establishment did not know it, Port Washington's population had peaked at 4036 in 1905. By 1910, the population had dropped to 3792 and by 1920, had fallen to 3340. As a result, the number of new buildings being constructed in the downtown fell off dramatically as can be seen by the fact that only four new buildings were built on N. Franklin St. between 1911 and 1954, when a large fire in the 100 block of N. Franklin St. cleared a site for the new Smith Bros. restaurant building (100 N. Franklin St.) that was built in that year.

Fortunately for Port Washington, the lack of construction in the downtown core of the city between 1910 and 1950 has resulted in the retention of most of the historic commercial buildings that were constructed on N. Franklin St. prior to 1950. As a result, much of the city's historic commercial history is still visible in all its diversity today.

The following is one theme for which enough information exists to justify separate treatment.

Hotels

The downtown core of Port Washington contains both one of the oldest and also the newest buildings constructed as hotels in the city prior to World War II, and three others as well, this being most of the historic hotels that were ever built in Port Washington. The first "hotel" in Port Washington was run by Aurora Adams, who utilized one of the first houses (location unknown) built in 1835 by Wooster Harrison and ran it from 1839 to 1843. One of the earliest real hotels was the American House, a large frame structure (non-extant) that was located on the site of the present Port Hotel. Supposedly, at least one and possibly two more hotels calling themselves the American House were built on this same site as well (in 1883 and 1893, reputedly) before the present hotel building (101 E. Main St.) was built on the site by J. F. Thill in 1902. Another very early hotel that is still extant is the Wisconsin House (308-312 N. Franklin St.), built in 1855 after the first, built in 1852, was destroyed in a fire. A block further down the street is the Wilson Hotel (200-202 N. Franklin St.), built in 1891 on the site of the Union House Hotel, which was built in 1850 as a commercial building and expanded and converted into a hotel between 1867 and 1875.

Two other historic hotels are located across the street from each other on opposite corners of W. Grand Ave. and Milwaukee St. These are the Hoffman House Hotel (200 W. Grand Ave. NRHP), built in 1895, and the Ed. Luutzen Hotel and Saloon (201 W. Grand Ave.), built in 1899. The Lutzen Hotel was actually built on the site of an earlier hotel that had also once been known as the American House.(6)

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NOTES ON SOURCES

Surprisingly, while a great deal of information is available about Port Washington's manufacturing history (which see), relatively little has been written about the city's commercial history. Research into such themes as general stores, hardware stores, restaurants, saloons, etc. that are typically products of an intensive survey proved difficult to undertake in Port Washington due to the lack of any previous overviews on these subjects or the lack of accessible and systematic sources of information about the individual firms that would normally be dealt with in such thematic discussions. For instance, only two city directories for Port Washington printed prior to 1948 have been identified. One is from 1900 and the other, a business directory without addresses, is printed on the 1873-74 map of the county. Other typical resources such as the 1881 County History makes almost no mention of individual commercial enterprises and neither do the various otherwise excellent semi-centennial, centennial, 125th anniversary, and sesquicentennial histories of the city. All this is the more ironic since the existence of complete real estate tax rolls for Port Washington makes it a routine matter to identify the original owner and date of construction of the various buildings associated with the city's commercial history.

The best sources of information on the commercial history of Port Washington are the aforementioned directories and The Jobber & Retailer Magazine. Milwaukee: June, 1910, and the several Sanborn-Perris maps of Port Washington. Historic newspapers also exist, but many of these are printed in German and utilizing the ones that are not in a systematic manner is out of the scope of a survey such as this.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

History of Washington & Ozaukee Counties, Wisconsin. Chicago: Western Historical Co., 1881.

The Jobber & Retailer Magazine. Milwaukee: June, 1910.

Krause's Directory of Ozaukee County:1900. Port Washington: W. D. Krause, publisher.

Nash, G. V. and M. G. Tucker. Map of Washington and Ozaukee Counties. Milwaukee: 1873-4.

Ozaukee Press, September 5, 1985, Part 5, p. 1 (photo). Sesquicentennial Issue.

Port Washington: The Little City of Seven Hills. Port Washington, 1908.

Footnotes:

1. This conjecture is based on pictures of Wooster's own house, the first in the village, which was a simple Front Gable form building that was later expanded into a Gable Ell form building (non-extant). See: Ozaukee Press, September 5, 1985, Part 4, p. 2 (photo). Sesquicentennial Issue.

2. It is worth noting that all the survivors from this decade are two and three story buildings, which presumably were possibly the most economically viable and well-built examples of the decade and therefore the ones that were most likely to be continuously useful and valuable.

3. History of Washington & Ozaukee Counties, Wisconsin. Chicago: Western Historical Co., 1881, p. 514.

4. An excellent photo taken just after the fire shows what this group of burnt out commercial buildings looked like. See: Ozaukee Press, September 5, 1985, Part 5, p. 1 (photo). Sesquicentennial Issue.

5. The Jobber & Retailer Magazine. Milwaukee: June, 1910; pp. 12-14.

6. Ozaukee Press, September 5, 1985, Part 5, p. 4 (photo).

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