Milwaukee Audioguides

Milwaukee sits at the confluence of three rivers, the Milwaukee, Menomonee, and Kinnickinnic, where they empty into Lake Michigan's western shore. German immigrants arrived in such numbers in the mid-19th century that by 1900 they comprised 34 percent of the population, bringing brewing traditions that turned the city into America's beer capital. The names Pabst, Schlitz, and Miller are not nostalgia for Milwaukee; they are origin stories. The Pabst Mansion, built in 1892 by Captain Frederick Pabst at the height of the brewing boom, is now a museum on Wisconsin Avenue and describes a city that briefly had more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in the country.

Milwaukee's political history is equally distinctive.

Three socialist mayors served between 1910 and 1960, a tradition locals call sewer socialism to distinguish it from the more theoretical variety: they built sewers, parks, water systems, and public utilities. The lakefront public park system, running uninterrupted for miles along Lake Michigan's shore, is one enduring result. The Milwaukee Art Museum's Santiago Calatrava-designed Quadracci Pavilion, opened in 2001 with a moveable brise soleil wing-span of nearly 66 meters that opens and closes daily at noon, is the more recent addition. The Harley-Davidson Museum, covering the history of the motorcycle brand founded in a shed here in 1903, anchors the Menomonee River Valley.