We’re lucky to have great neighbors in our northwest side neighborhood and some of our closest have also been in the area longest. They’ve known everyone who has lived in our house since it was built in the 1940s, and can recall round robins and cocktail parties dating back decades before we moved in.
Over the years we’ve often visited for cocktails and chat and there’s a photo in their dining room that has always sparked my curiosity. It is a photograph of Helen’s parents at the family butcher shop at 1508 N. 10th St., between Cherry and Galena, dating to around 1910-12, and it is a window into an immigrant Milwaukee neighborhood erased by the construction of the freeway.
In the shop windows you can see pigs and other products, behind a sign on the glass reading "Blaskovic’s Meat Market." On the steps, looking proud and stern are Lawrence Barosich, owner Emil Blaskovics, Mary Barosich, Emil’s wife Antonia Blaskovics and William Schondel."
From the "Negro Business Directory, 1953-54." (PHOTO: Courtesy of Wisconsin Black Historical Society)
The products in the window are priced astonishingly at 8 cents, 10 cents, 15 cents, 17 cents.
The photograph was taken a few years before my neighbor Helen was born to the Blaskovics.
"I think they moved the shop to 1101 W. Walnut St. after that," says Helen’s daughter Nancy, "and then expanded the business to a wholesale poultry operation, and built on to the butcher shop to include offices, large commercial walk-in freezers, slaughtering floors, elevators, a garage big enough for large trucks. The building wrapped around from the butcher shop facing Walnut Street to halfway around the block on 11th Street. We have a drawing of the Walnut Street shop:"
In the 1950s, the city bought out the Blaskovics as part of land acquisition to build I-43 and, Nancy said, the family bought the old Boston Store warehouse at 113 W. Virginia St., in Walker’s Point, where it remained until the business closed in the early 1980s.
"They slaughtered not only chickens but calves and pigs until the ‘50s. After that the were strictly purveyors. They were major poultry suppliers to Kohl’s, Roundy’s. etc."
Born in Brooklyn, N.Y., where he lived until he was 17, Bobby received his BA-Mass Communications from UWM in 1989 and has lived in Walker's Point, Bay View, Enderis Park, South Milwaukee and on the East Side.
He has published three non-fiction books in Italy – including one about an event in Milwaukee history, which was published in the U.S. in autumn 2010. Four more books, all about Milwaukee, have been published by The History Press.
With his most recent band, The Yell Leaders, Bobby released four LPs and had a songs featured in episodes of TV's "Party of Five" and "Dawson's Creek," and films in Japan, South America and the U.S. The Yell Leaders were named the best unsigned band in their region by VH-1 as part of its Rock Across America 1998 Tour. Most recently, the band contributed tracks to a UK vinyl/CD tribute to the Redskins and collaborated on a track with Italian novelist Enrico Remmert.
He's produced three installments of the "OMCD" series of local music compilations for OnMilwaukee.com and in 2007 produced a CD of Italian music and poetry.
In 2005, he was awarded the City of Asti's (Italy) Journalism Prize for his work focusing on that area. He has also won awards from the Milwaukee Press Club.
He has be heard on 88Nine Radio Milwaukee talking about his "Urban Spelunking" series of stories, in that station's most popular podcast.
