Washington Park

Designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, Sr., in 1892, Washington Park was once a thriving urban park but has suffered in recent years from disinvestment and deferred maintenance. While eligible for local and perhaps national historic designation, the park’s historic landscape features remain at-risk as myriad local stewards and interest groups balance natural and cultural concerns in planning for the park’s future.

History

In the early 1890s the nascent Milwaukee Board of Park Commissioners engaged Fredrick Law Olmsted, Sr., to help select locations to establish urban parks, hiring him to design three of them. The landscape architect envisioned a park system akin to Boston’s “Emerald Necklace,” similarly calling the project a “Grand Necklace of Parks.” The commission acquired 125 acres, much of which was previously used for cabbage farming, between 40th and 47th Streets from Vliet Street to Pabst Avenue (now Lloyd Street) for West Park in 1891. While Olmsted, Sr., thought West Park was too far from the city center, he was attracted to its fifteen-acre native forest and rolling topography that, rising 130 to 180 feet above Lake Michigan, offered panoramic vistas. His design included a seven-acre lagoon in the northeast section of the park, a network of drives and walks, a pastoral meadow, a picnic area, a play area, and extensive plantings of trees and shrubs. Supervised by the Olmsted firm’s superintendent of planting, Warren Manning, over twelve thousand trees and shrubs, including ash, maples, and elms, were planted between 1896 and 1897. Trees were additionally planted on either side of all bordering streets. To accommodate animals donated by Louis Auer and Gustave Pabst, Olmsted, Sr., laid out a “deer enclosure” in the southwest corner of the park, which soon evolved into a zoo.

General Plan of West Park, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1895. Image courtesy of Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site.

The park was renamed Washington Park in 1900 and with the addition of 23.2 acres in 1902 and 2.3 acres in 1906, expanded north to Lisbon Avenue and east to North 40th Street. Three years later Milwaukee’s first public golf course was established on a portion of the site and in 1908 the extant bronze Goeth-Schiller monument was erected in the park’s western section. Other athletic facilities constructed in the park included a one-mile-long horse racing track, lawn tennis courts, and a toboggan slide with spectator grandstands. An Art Deco bandshell designed by Fitzhugh Scott, grandly named the “Emil Blatz Temple of Music,” opened in 1938 and hosted a popular “Music Under the Stars” concert series. Washington Park Neighbors, an all-volunteer group, has been organizing weekly community concerts during the summer in recent years.

Postcard of Washington Park, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Postcard published by the Wisconsin News Company.

Constructed from 1953 to 1955, a freeway (now called Highway 175) assumed the western edge of the park, cutting off access to the park for nearby residents, and also increasing noise pollution and vehicular traffic in the area. Unable to expand in that location, the zoo was relocated to its current site, approximately three-and-a-half miles to the southwest of the park, in 1968. The park and the surrounding neighborhood, both named Washington Park, suffered from disinvestment in the second half of the twentieth century and early 21st century. In 2000 Quorum Architects, Inc., prepared a “Master Plan for the Revitalization of Washington Park” for the Milwaukee County Department of Parks. Some recommendations were implemented; others have not been. Recently, organizations including the United Methodist Children's Services, Hmong American Friendship Association, Inc., and Near West Side Partners, have worked to revitalize the surrounding community. Since 2007, the Urban Ecology Center (UEC) has leased a former boathouse in the northeast portion of the park to offer environmental education programs, and more recently has leased some twenty acres of the park from Milwaukee County. The UEC wishes to expand the former boathouse, adding a second story. In 2022, Wisconsin’s Department of Transportation announced that it would study the potential to rebuild the stretch of Highway 175 as a boulevard, to help reconnect the park to all adjacent neighborhoods.

Postcard of Washington Park, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 1944. Postcard published by E.C. Kropp Co.