Author: Carl Swanson

The five children of Henry James Sr. include some of America’s greatest thinkers. Henry’s oldest son, the philosopher and educator William James, is considered the father of American psychology. His second son and namesake Henry James Jr. wrote 22 novels, hundreds of short stories, and many volumes of biographies, travel writing, art criticism, and memoirs. A third son, Robert, showed promise as an artist and writer until alcoholism derailed his career. Their sister, Alice, taught history but suffered from psychological and physical illness much of her life. Her sharply observed and insightful diaries, published after her death, are still...

In 1879, Milwaukeeans were shocked to learn of abusive treatment at the county-operated House of Corrections. Inmates, they learned, were routinely fed rotting meat, physically and verbally abused by guards, and could be punished with solitary confinement in a small, darkened cell for as long as 20 days at a time for infractions as minor as talking. Initially reported by the Milwaukee Sentinel, the accusations were so serious that the then-governor of Wisconsin, William E. Smith, directed the State Board of Charities and Reform to conduct an investigation. After a month of hearings in Milwaukee and sworn testimony from...

The first Milwaukee courthouse was built in 1836 at the site of what today is Cathedral Square Park. This sample chapter from the book “Lost Milwaukee” by Milwaukee Notebook writer Carl Swanson. Early settler James S. Buck wrote the four-volume Pioneer History of Milwaukee, which one writer described as “a fascinating hodgepodge of largely undigested facts, gossip, puffs and salty observations.” Buck included events both great and small in the city’s formative years. For example, many historians relate the construction of Milwaukee’s first courthouse in what is today Cathedral Square, but only Buck gave us “The Courthouse Trouser Disaster.”...

In 1845, an argument over who should pay for civic improvements escalated to the point that a cannon was wheeled out to threaten the west side of town with artillery fire. The dispute ended in the wrecking of most of the bridges in town. They called it the Bridge War. The dispute is all the more remarkable for Milwaukee, standing at the confluence of three rivers, is a city of bridges. A 1935 article in the Milwaukee Journal noted, “Milwaukeeans cross their bridges when they come to them – and they come to them, on the average, more than...