Milwaukee Fire Department

The Milwaukee Fire Department, like the city it serves, boasts a long and proud past, rich with diverse details. The department first formed as a volunteer organization in 1837, evolving into a full-time service by 1874. Steeped in pride and tradition, its penchant for innovation is legendary. These traits have characterized legions of brave and skillful professionals whose devotion to duty established the department's reputation as a leader in protecting lives and property. Throughout the department's history, its members have left their mark in countless ways, reflecting the background, work ethic, and talent of Milwaukee's citizens.

The vehicles and other firefighting equipment of the Milwaukee Fire Department, like the department itself, are unique among the fire service. It built more of its own apparatus than any other American city and few can match the scope and character of apparatus used to serve and protect life and property in Milwaukee. Through detailed research, firsthand narratives, and captivating photos, the author walks the reader through the fascinating history of the incredible machines that served Cream City from the mid-nineteenth century to modern times. This volume traces the ever-changing face of Milwaukee's fire-fighting and life-saving equipment in parallel with the city's own history and growth. The fire department workshop's reputation for ingenuity is shown through its adaptations to disastrous fires that brought about changes in laws, economic growth and decline, the establishment of Milwaukee's ethnic neighborhoods, the difficult transition from horses to motorization, the wartime and post-war experience, the corporate world of apparatus manufacturers, and Milwaukee's fireboat fleet.

150 Year History of the Watertown Fire Department, Watertown, Wisconsin.

Milwaukees Brady Street neighborhood, bounded by the Milwaukee River, Lake Michigan, Ogdon Avenue, and Kane Place, is arguably the most densely-populated square mile in the state of Wisconsin. A mix of historic shops, single-family homes, apartments, and condos, Brady Street boasts of great diversity that draws from many distinct eras. It began in the mid-19th century as a crossroads between middle-class Yankees from the east and early German settlers. Polish and Italian immigrants soon followed, working the mills, tanneries, and breweries that lined the riverbank. After these groups had assimilated and many of their descendents moved to the suburbs, the hippies in the 1960s arrived with their counterculture to fill the void. By the 1980s, the area fell into blight, neglect, and decay; now, a true model for new urbanism, the Brady Street neighborhood is in the midst of a renaissance.