Milwaukee's Historic Third Ward
Near Milwaukee, Wisconsin
This stop on the Third Ward walking tour marks the old William Grossman coffee and tea mill, a brick warehouse from the early nineteen hundreds that survives in the heart of one of Milwaukee's most storied neighborhoods.
The Third Ward was once a crowded Irish enclave, until a catastrophic fire in eighteen ninety-two. On a single October night, an exploding oil barrel set off a blaze that destroyed more than four hundred buildings and left thousands of people homeless. As the Irish moved on, Italian immigrants poured in to rebuild.
They turned these streets into Commission Row, a dense district of grocery houses, produce dealers, and warehouses like Grossman's. By the nineteen tens the ward held dozens of Italian groceries, saloons, a bank, and pasta factories. Today those handsome old warehouses house galleries, lofts, and shops, the rebuilt bones of an immigrant story.
