[milwaukee-electric] Re: Milwaukee-area Lustrons (1948 to 1950)

[Gary Schnabl]

Aaron's house was right where Toronto started--at Hope.
There were two creeks in the Capitol Court marsh that feed into the 
Lincoln Creek. One creek started a bit south of Capitol between 52nd and 
53rd and headed into Capitol Court before being rerouted into storm 
sewers after the Capitol Court shopping center was built. Another small 
creek led into it and then the resulting creek pretty much went straight 
east down Hope (or Oak, its former name).

Then it headed into the Lincoln Creek at around 44th or 45th Streets 
before the government built the state's first welfare 
project--Parklawn--in the 40 acres between Sherman and 47th Streets and 
between Hope and Congress. When the project was built under FDR, that 
creek was rerouted into the "excrement-laden" storm sewer below 47th 
Street at the creek. That location still is numero uno or dos in 
Milwaukee's water pollution, to this day. Parklawn is still a welfare 
project--the only project anywhere with its own YMCA, after it was 
completely made over.

Another creek (or a dug culvert) entered the Lincoln Creek from the 
north about a block below the 47th Street "dam," where I went crabbing a 
lot since I was five years old. It was easy to catch 50 to 100 crayfish 
in a short time at the "dam" with cords and salt pork or bacon pieces. 
Either boiled and ate them or sold them to eager fisherman--good money 
in those days...


On 7/8/2010 12:58 PM, Ken and Tracie wrote:
> Montreal and Toronto Streets bordered part of Lincoln Creek's original
> channel.
>
> I remember houses on north-south streets between Capitol and Congress, from
> about N. 38th Street to Sherman Boulevard  having rural style mailboxes into
> the mid-1960s
>
> Before Lincoln Creek was re-routed, there was also a small "feeder" creek
> running north on the east side of N. 35th Street, which fed into Lincoln
> Creek on the south side of Capitol, along the edge of  the A.O. Smith
> property.
>    

That "feeder" creek was most likely the same Lincoln Creek after it 
turned around in the AO Smith property. The railroad had a big yard 
there by the Gehl dairy on Capitol Drive. The original creek might have 
gone into the yard for a very short distance. I remember seeing what I 
initially thought was a spring east of 35th and Congress. but more than 
likely, it was waste water from the yard because oil was often present 
in the flowing water that trickled down into the rerouted creek.

> Quite a few creeks on Milwaukee's Northwest Side were placed into tunnels
> and/or re-aligned.
>
> Several met the "Dineen Park" creek right near Northwest General Hospital,
> near 53rd and Capitol.
>
> The Dineen Park creek and the creek originating at McGovern Park (or perhaps
> north of Silver Spring on the former House of Corrections/USDB property, now
> Havenwoods State Forest), both emerge from their tunnels, to empty into
> Lincoln Creek, near N. 48th and Congress.
>    

I would occasionally fish or crab at McGovern Park. I thought that the 
park's lagoon emptied into a storm sewer, south of the park. I never 
ventured north or west past McGovern Park, as a kid--too far from home...

But I had a more-distant relative who once owned a fair amount of 
undeveloped property just to the west of the park.

> The creek which used to run east from about N. 78th Street and Marion
> roughly between Fiebrantz and Marion until "diagonal-ing" northeast at N.
> 65th, to cross Congress, Fond du Lac, then enter Lincoln Creek at about
> N.62nd Street, emerges from its tunnel, entering Lincoln Creek just above
> North 60th, just north of Fond du Lac.
>
> During the floods during the spring of 1974, the creek exiting Dineen Park,
> overtopped its tunnel at N. 63rd and Melvina, found its original path and
> severely damaged several homes along the way, between dispersing at N. 60th
> and Capitol.
>
> You can fool with Mother Nature, but you can't fool her.
>
> K.
>    

The government planned to only spend around $10 million or so, cleaning 
up and altering Lincoln Creek. I believe the ultimate cost was around 
$125 million...

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Gary Schnabl"<gSchnabl at SWDetroit.com>
> To:<milwaukee-electric at lists.dementia.org>
> Sent: Thursday, July 08, 2010 3:35 AM
> Subject: [milwaukee-electric] Re: Milwaukee-area Lustrons (1948 to 1950)
>
>
>    
>> On 7/8/2010 3:41 AM, Don L. Leistikow wrote:
>>      
>>> Gary S and list:    Yes, I remember them.  That was long ago.
>>>
>>> I recall some of them on the north side of town.  Capitol Drive rings a
>>> bell as does Burleigh Street, in Wauwatosa.
>>>
>>> Surely there must be a way to trace these Lustron Homes.... sided with
>>> porcelain enameled metal panels.  No painting, ever, just hose the house
>>> down.  Ranch style construction, too.
>>>
>>> Perhaps tracing their location via Building Permits for 1948 thru 1950.
>>> If those records are now on internet files, the search could be quickly
>>> completed.
>>>
>>> Don L.
>>>
>>>        
>> Yes, there are about six of them between 81st and 91st Streets in
>> Wauwatosa--from a bit north of Burleigh to around North. I think that
>> another Lustron was near Blue Mound Road, too.
>>
>> A Lustron could easily be moved, even with its ten tons of porcelain
>> steel. The one I suspected that Aaron lived in is now essentially 1/2
>> block away on Marion or Sercombe (the original name for 39th Street).
>> Records are inconclusive, as government records were not always
>> accurate. However, that Lustron was repainted yellow, as some white
>> shows in places.
>>
>> Sometime during the Great Depression, Lincoln Creek was rerouted from a
>> meandering surface creek from Sherman and Congress through or skirting
>> my grandfather's thirty acres north of 42nd and Capitol Drive then
>> headed roughly SE to cross Capitol Drive twice--at 36th and 34th
>> Streets--and then did a 180 inside the AO Smith plant's 160 acres at
>> 35th Street. The original Lincoln Creek hindered Lake Street (now
>> Capitol Drive) from around being built west of 27th Street to around
>> 35th Street or whatever until the 1920s or so.
>>
>> All of those half dozen or so Lustrons on my uncle's paper route in 1948
>> were withinh 1/8 mile of the former route of Lincoln Creek, suggesting
>> that they all were erected on newly reclaimed city lots after the creek
>> detour at Congress Street--essentially an EW trench dug by the WPA or
>> the CCC. I alerted the Lustron Registry to get those three Milwaukee
>> maps that show the original Lincoln Creek, because most of the very few
>> vacant lots that I noticed during 1950 were on the original Lincoln
>> Creek's route.
>>
>> I suspected that Aaron's Lustron was on West Hope Avenue--the 3700 or
>> 3800 blocks (even numbered). Assuming that my recollection as an
>> 11-year-old kid was OK. We kids played many hundred games of hardball
>> baseball from 1952 through 1955/56 in the large empty area, now occupied
>> by a middle school, west of 36th Street and Hope. Aaron's house was on
>> one of a few lots next to that field.
>>
>>
>> Gary
>>      
>
>    


-- 

Gary Schnabl
Southwest Detroit, two miles NORTH! of Canada--Windsor, that is...

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