Urban Spelunking is brought to you by Nicolet Law.
Thanks to a facilities master plan, Milwaukee Recreation is in the midst of rehabbing all of its 52 playfields scattered across the city, to restore important sites for play, recreation and community in neighborhoods around Milwaukee.
Ten playfield renovations have been completed since Columbia Playfield’s work wrapped up in 2019, but big projects to improve these neighborhood sites go back much further, of course, and one in particular stands as an example of how the public and private sectors can band together with a community to improve a park or playground.
Merrill Playfield, 461 N. 35th St., has a baseball diamond, tennis courts, a tot lot playground, wading pool, basketball courts, a big grassy field and the Fred Green Community Center located in the 1928 fieldhouse.
Adjacent to the playfield but separated by a line of trees is Quad Park Athletic Complex, the site of the Marquette University Stadium from 1924 until 1977, now owned by Marquette University High School.
In 1977, the City of Milwaukee sought to convince the County Board to take over four recreational facilities, arguing that, “standards are established which indicate that large facilities used on a countywide basis are the province of the county park commission.”
The city noted that, “most of the recreational facilities meeting these criteria have been transferred, (but) there still remains a number which have not,” including Wick Field, Sijan, Hawthorn Glen and Merrill Park.
The effort was unsuccessful.
Then, in 1996, the Merrill Park Initiative was launched to renovate the 12-acre playfield located in a historic neighborhood on Milwaukee’s West Side.
More on that later, but first, a little history.
The Merrill Park neighborhood is named for Sherburn Sanborn Merrill, who was general manager of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railroad (aka the Milwaukee Road), which since the 1870s owned land in the Menomonee Valley, where its railroad shops employing more than 2,500 people opened in 1880.
Born in Alexandria, New Hampshire, Merrill moved to Milwaukee in 1850 and worked many jobs on the railroads, including construction foreman, conductor, paymaster, general manager and assistant superintendent.
In order to provide nearby housing for these workers, Merrill created a neighborhood in 1883 between 30th and 35th Streets – land that lay between the railyards and his own Grand Avenue home (which occupied the site that’s now home to Marquette University High School).
A mix of cottages, single-family homes, duplexes and apartment buildings began to dot the area.
The residents were a mix of immigrants from Germany and England, as well as migrants from New England. That is until a massive blaze leveled the Third Ward and sent its heavily Irish population in search of new homes.
Heading west, these Irish-Americans turned Merrill Park into an Irish enclave, albeit one that Merrill aimed to keep “respectable” via a series of deed restrictions that banned liquor, among other things.
By the early years of the 20th century, John Gurda noted in his book, “The West End,” the Milwaukee Road was the city’s largest employer, with 5,500 workers. “They came from both sides of the Menomonee Valley ... but Merrill Park, with the railroad at its doorstep, had the highest concentration of railroad workers in the city.”
An Urban Anthropology Inc. oral history project found that during a half-century of the 1900s, the neighborhood “produced nearly 100 judges, district attorneys, and state, county and city legislators and municipal department heads. During this period, three of four county executives were Merrill Parkers. And three of four Milwaukee mayors were raised in the neighborhood.”
(NOTE: In an interesting aside Sherburn Merrill's grandson and namesake, Sherburn Merrill Becker, was the city's last Republican mayor, serving a two-year term beginning in 1906. Elected at age 29, Becker was called, the "boy mayor," and is the man responsible for destroying the city's jeweler's street clocks, which he abhorred for their advertising and because he felt they obstructed sidewalks.)
Among well-known Merrill Park residents were Milwaukee mayors – and brothers – Carl and Frank Zeidler, County Executive William O’Donnell and actor Spencer Tracy, who was born in the neighborhood in 1900.
These days, the Merrill Park neighborhood stretches from 27th to 39th Street and from Wisconsin Avenue south to the I-94 freeway.
Merrill Playfield – bounded by 35th and 37th Streets, St. Paul Avenue to the south and Michigan Street to the north – is the only large public greenspace in the neighborhood and has been well-used by residents over the past century.
Two nearby sites – one adjacent to the west side of the playfield and the other across 35th Street – are private athletic fields owned by Marquette University High School.
Although much of the site had been vacant before the creation of the park – a large chunk was marked “vacant fields” on the 1894 Sanborn Map – January 1928 newspaper reports recalled that at least part of the land had previously hosted the circus when it came to town.
“Ald. Arthur Bennett has obtained common council consent to his proposal that the former circus ground, 36th and Clybourn St., now a well-equipped playground, be given the name of Merrill Park Playground,” the Journal wrote.
“The high point of the year for many Merrill Parkers, especially the youngsters, was the arrival of the circus,” Gurda added. “The big top went up on a large tract of land bordered by St. Paul and Michigan between 35th and 38th Streets.
“Throughout the summer a procession of the biggest companies in the business set up on the ‘circus grounds:’ Ringling Brothers, Barnum and Bailey, Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show, 101 Wild West Ranch, Sells-Floto, Hagenbeck and Wallace, Gentry Brothers, and a number of others.”
Just outside the field house, a boulder serves as a memorial to this era, reading, “Here at Milwaukee’s West End, circus companies would set up their big top tents, 1890s-1923.”
In 1923, the Grand Avenue Park Company sold the eastern part of the site to the City of Milwaukee and the western part was sold to Marquette University for its football stadium (which is now MUHS’ Quad Park).
At this time, Gurda added, “the gentle slope was interrupted by a retaining wall, and the upper level was filled in and used for football field and baseball diamonds. The neighborhood finally had a recreational area of its own.”
In May 1928, the Journal reported that the city planned to spend, “about $100,000 for a playground and athletic field in the Merrill Park district, on the site known as the circus grounds. One of the items of cost is $29,500 for a field house.”
The building – likely designed by city engineer and architect Charles Malig – who designed a $17,000 field house on 11th and Cleveland at what is now called Modrzejewski Playground the previous year – was to include, “shower baths, lockers and other conveniences for those who use the play fields.”
The need for a playfield and field house was demonstrated by vandalism at the very site of the fieldhouse construction.
“One morning recently when those at work on the building arrived, they found 19 panes of glass in the windows broken by stones,” the Journal reported. “Piles of material for use on the grounds nearby provided the missiles.”
This incident led an unnamed newspaper writer to editorialize on the matter...
“The temptation to throw the stones at something that would break when hit had been too strong to resist. Probably the boys who threw those stones just didn’t think. They saw only the stones and the target that would break with a noise when it was hit. Perhaps some who were boys years ago can remember the temptation in such a situation. Boys, and older persons as well, do not always consider the possible results of their acts.
"In this instance the boys didn’t take time to realize that they were destroying property that was built particularly for their use; that such destruction might discourage those who had gone to some pains to see that proper play facilities are provided for Milwaukee children; that they were really breaking windows provided for their use by others. They didn’t think of any of the many things that might have kept them from throwing those stones. And yet how many older folks think of the consequences of the stones they throw – consequences often much more serious than a broken window?
“How much have these boys seen in the conduct of older persons that might have restrained them in this instance? Do they see their elders respecting the rights of others, refusing to 'break windows' although there are stones handy and nobody around to see? After the first impulse to demand that boys who break windows be punished, somehow it seems that perhaps better examples set for the youngsters by their elders might do more good. In the meantime, boys, remember that those field houses and playgrounds are built for you to use and enjoy. You’re hurting your own interest when you damage them.”
Construction didn’t take long and by summer 1928, the field house was open and offering community services like the Milwaukee Health Department’s weekly child welfare clinic.
In June, the Journal boasted that, “the field houses which have been built on the Burnham Street, Auer Avenue (now Moody Park) and Merrill Park athletic fields are said to rank among the best in the country.”
During the Depression years of 1933-34, relief workers improved the park facilities, adding a basketball court, a baseball diamond, four softball fields, seven tennis courts and a new playground, as well as lighting for the entire facility.
The work on the playfield and its field house was conceived, planned and executed under the watchful eye of Playground Division Commissioner R.E. Stoelting and his playground engineer Gilbert Clegg, a couple of unsung heroes in Milwaukee history.
The single-story Neoclassical red brick field house has three symmetrical bays topped with a hipped roof.
The center bay has an arched double-door entry flanked by double arched windows. Each of the flanking bats has two single arched windows and two infilled arched window openings. All of the arched openings have cast stone keystone decoration and sills.
Although there were originally three gabled dormers on the roof, those have since been removed.
Around the back are entrances to restrooms for men and women.
Inside, the spaces have been somewhat modernized with fluorescent lights, acoustic ceiling tiles and linoleum floor tiles.
But, fortunately, beautiful dark wood crown moldings, built-ins and doors survive, as does exposed glazed brown brick on the walls and around the window frames.
The basement is especially evocative with an old “baseball permit board,” storage rooms, classic MPS green paint and at least one room with a dutch door.
Outside, above the front door, is a sign bearing the name, “Fred Green Community Center,” and inside, hanging on an office wall, is a plaque with a reproduction of a newspaper article that explains who Green was.
Born in 1943, Frederic D. Green operated a landscaping business and was vice president of the Merrill Park Neighborhood Association, who, columnist Eugene Kane wrote, “fought to preserve the safety of the neighborhood against crime, often confronting drug dealers in the area at his own personal risk. ... He ran his own business with the same social conscience, often trimming trees and cutting grass free for residents who couldn’t afford to pay.”
Though drug dealers threatened the life of the man everyone else called “Daddy Green” it was his kindness and charity that led to his death in 2000. Green fell from a ladder while trimming a tree for a friend.
Considering his selfless devotion to Merrill Park, the naming of the center in his honor seems a fitting tribute.
Fortunately Green was able to see the collaboration that led to the park’s renovation in 1996 – the so-called Merrill Park Initiative.
According to an internal Milwaukee Recreation memo, the initiative was, “a unique public-private partnership of elected officials, Milwaukee Public Schools Recreation Division and the private sector which includes neighborhood groups, local businesses and schools.
“The purpose of this partnership is twofold: first, to rehabilitate the recreational area at Merrill Park for the benefit of neighborhood children and families on the near west side; second, to revitalize a historic neighborhood and the 35th Street business corridor near it.”
At the time, the park was in need. Although it had a field house, tot lot, wading pool, baseball field, softball fields, soccer field, tennis courts, basketball courts, game area and volleyball pit, it was, the memo noted, “heavily used” and suffered from, “a reduction in funding for recreational improvements by federal, state and local governments over the past 20 years.”
The result was asphalt that was so beat up it was potentially unsafe for children, the tennis courts were unusable because of damaged playing surfaces, the tot lot failed to meet Consumer Products Safety Commission safety specifications or Americans with Disabilities Act guidelines.
In addition to repairing and restoring the park and its amenities, the initiative also aimed to provide supervised programs and summer sports camps for children as well as programming for families and adults.
Among the participants and supporters of the initiative were Milwaukee Recreation, Marquette University High School, St. Rose of Lima School and Story School, along with local residents, business owners, elected officials, neighborhood associations and the City of Milwaukee.
The Milwaukee Brewers, the Major League Baseball Players Association and True Value hardware also lent a hand.
A budget amendment to supply city funds for the project was signed into law by Mayor John Norquist on Nov. 17, 1994, leading the city to chip in up to $150,000 as part of a one-to-one match with private sector contributions.
Among the donations were $50,000 each from Miller Brewing and Ken Yontz; $30,000 from Wisconsin Energy; $15,000 from Stein Medical; $10,000 each from the Bradley and Harley-Davidson Foundations; $2,500 from Falk; $500 from Park Bank; and contributions from Marquette High School, Merrill Park Neighborhood Association, Valley Park Civic Association, West End Association, Historic Concordia, Cold Spring Park Neighborhood and Hmong/American Friendship Association.
A $300,000 budget allowed for new tennis courts with bleachers, a new tot lot, resurfacing the basketball courts, renovating the baseball diamonds and more.
That effort brought Merrill Park back up to date, though now that work is nearly 30 years old and Milwaukee Recreation’s 2020 Master Plan to equitably renovate all its playfields ranks Merrill Park in the yellow in terms of need.
But, there are a number of playfields in the red at the moment and so, in the near term, Merrill Park is not on the to-be-renovated list ... yet.
(NOTE: This article was written for Milwaukee Recreation's institutional history project. While the topic was provided by Milwaukee Recreation, the content was not.)
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.
