River path not always public
Temporary ‘closed’ sign kept walk private
For the most part, the Milwaukee RiverWalk is a wide-open walkway from Schlitz Park to the Historic Third Ward. It wasn’t always that way.
Before the push in the 1980s to expand walkways downtown along the Milwaukee River, there were just a few stretches of riverwalk for Milwaukeeans to stroll. One of the oldest was the one from Wisconsin Ave. to Mason St., along the river behind several banking properties, including Marshall & Illsley Bank and the First Wisconsin National Bank Building at 735 N. Water St.
It was built in 1925 — according to a Dec. 3, 1925, Milwaukee Journal story, at the urging of Oscar Greenwald, general manager of the Gimbels department store on the other side of the river. Gimbels had built its riverwalk in 1920, from Wisconsin Ave. (then Grand Ave.) to what is now Michigan St., and Greenwald told a directors meeting of First Wisconsin National Bank that he could build one for them in 20 days.
“The directors doubted his ability,” The Journal wrote in its Dec. 3 story, the day after the new riverwalk debuted. “He (Greenwald) took charge and, in less than 20 days, the walk is open.”
But according to state law, just because a private landowner builds a riverwalk didn’t necessarily mean it can keep it. If public use of private land was allowed uninterrupted, the argument went, that property could revert to public ownership.
So to assert its control over its part of the blocklong riverwalk, First Wisconsin National Bank regularly hung up a “closed” sign.
“The reason you couldn’t walk Friday on the boardwalk along the Milwaukee River at the rear of the First Wisconsin National Bank Building was old, old common law,” The Journal wrote in a not-too-serious story published on Oct. 29, 1949, the day after signs went up saying the “private right-of-way” would be closed for two days. “Once every 20 years, you will have to climb over a barricade on the walk — just as a lot of people did between 6 a.m. Friday and 6 a.m. Saturday.
“You wouldn’t want the bank to lose its boardwalk!”
The Journal noted that First Wisconsin’s “more serious” lawyers had advised the bank that if it “did not exercise its prerogative of ownership; namely, keeping you, a technical trespasser, OUT,” the bank’s stretch of riverwalk could be taken over by the city.
“The bank’s boardwalk now is safe for another 20 years.”
The periodic closures were more frequent than that. According to Journal files, it also was closed in 1932, 1958 and 1965.
A March 1958 Milwaukee Journal photo shows a set of signs redirecting customers of Heinemann’s Men’s Grill to the restaurant’s entrance on E. Wisconsin Ave. A Jan. 24, 1965, Journal story treats the closure like the routine it had become by then. The headline: “Bank to put up a detour, keep its river walk.”
The First Wisconsin/Marshall & Illsley segment of the RiverWalk is
still in private hands, but pedestrians don’t have to worry about climbing barricades anymore.
In the 1980s, Mayors Henry Maier and John Norquist pushed for an expansion of riverwalks in a bid to bring life back to downtown. New sections of the Milwaukee RiverWalk System included provisions to guarantee public access; over time, the business improvement district that oversees the RiverWalk worked to extend that to the earlier segments, said Alyssa Remington, economic development specialist with the Department of City Development and project manager for the Riverwalk district.
In December 2010, the district provided funding to upgrade the walkway behind the former First Wisconsin National Bank Building, which was being renovated to accommodate a new branch of Gold’s Gym. As part of that funding deal, Remington said, the city got permanent public access for that stretch of the RiverWalk — putting an end to the “private right-of-way” era.