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In the heart of Walker’s Point, there’s a stately red brick building adorned with Ionic columns that houses one of the city's largest meal programs.
St. Vincent de Paul Meal Program feeds hundreds of people a week and offers showers, too, in the lower level of the building it owns at 931 W. Madison St. It has served the community here since 1983.
Upstairs, the Vineyard Milwaukee Church holds services every Sunday and also has a program aimed at keeping kids off the streets.
But this building has roots that date back to 1909, when it opened as the first purpose-built branch library in the City of Milwaukee.
Designed by architects Brust and Philipp (whose work also includes the Kohler Factory Complex and the St. Joseph's Chapel on Layton Boulevard), the building has served the community in a variety of ways across its 115-year life.
Beginnings
The earliest library in Milwaukee was founded in 1847 by the Young Men's Association of Milwaukee, which started a literary society, hired a librarian and rented a reading room to house its nascent, but growing, book collection.
When the society was dissolved, it donated its 10,000 books – about a third of which were in German – to the City of Milwaukee and thus was the Milwaukee Public Library born.
However, the roots of the first branch on the South Side date to 1893 when South Side High School freshman Sam McKillop and the South Side Education Society teamed up to open a little lending library in the hallway of the school, which was then at 7th and Madison Streets, for use by students.
When MPL board member William Lindsay heard about this library, MPL began loaning books to McKillop’s library.
In 1895, the library got its own room at the school and when, in 1899, South Division got a new Henry Koch-designed building on Lapham Boulevard, the library stayed behind in the old building, which became Eugene Field School.
McKillop continued on as librarian there and when space grew too tight, McKillop became one of the main catalysts for the construction of a stand-alone South Side branch library.
A new library
In fact, by the time the $75,000 Neoclassical/Beaux Arts library designed by Peter Brust and Richard Philipp was dedicated on June 16, 1910, many South Siders had grown used to calling it “Sam’s Library,” in honor of McKillop's work.
By that time, the little high school corridor library had grown to circulating about 20,000 books PER MONTH, including many in Polish and German, reflecting the neighborhood’s immigrant character.
By 1916, McKillop was named MPL’s director of extensions and he is credited with creating Milwaukee’s system of branch libraries.
While some of those branches began life in rented retail spaces, they rapidly outgrew those quarters and ultimately got their own purpose-built homes.
The new South Side library had a semicircular reading room in the center, flanked by the Children's Room (to the left) and the Reference Room (to the right) – all reached by scaling a tall exterior staircase leading to an arched and barrel vaulted vestibule and a vaulted space called the Delivery Room – upstairs, while a public auditorium and meeting spaces were located downstairs.
There were 19 stacks of books fanning out from the librarians’ desk in the Stack Room. Off to the east and west were two small offices.
There were some openings – above half-height bookcases – between the Stack Room and the Children's and Reference Rooms, but those are now walled up.
A photo of the Children's Room also shows a fireplace, which I did not see when I visited. A floor plan suggests the Reference Room was not similarly blessed with this amenity.
Fortunately, the fireplace still exists, with its tile, wood mantle and carved panel above.
The building, notes the report prepared when it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1988, “served in educating, entertaining and acculturating the immigrant population of the working class neighborhood. It also served as a multipurpose community center and meeting place for neighborhood organizations.
“The unique design of the semi-circular room could be serviced and monitored from the central work area. This eliminated the need to walk down rows of stacks to find the right aisle.”
The three upper rooms each had a skylight, all of which remain visible but have been painted over.
The vestibule had two U-shaped staircases leading to the lower level, though one of them was altered by the installation in 1984 of an elevator.
The basement has a barrel vaulted corridor with bathrooms on either end and doors leading into the former assembly room, which is semi-circular like the Stack Room above it, and has a stage off to one side.
The basement also has a kitchen (on the west side) and mechanical rooms (to the east).
These days, the two classical statues and two busts on pedestals that once adorned the vestibule are gone, the pine floor in the Stack Room is covered and the Children’s and Reference Rooms have been chopped up into smaller office spaces.
Over the years, in addition to serving the reading and educational needs of the neighborhood – Field School was a couple blocks away, and Madison Street School was directly across the street – the South Side Library was a community hub.
Listings in the 1940s carry information about childrens’ story times, and in the ‘50s movies were shown. Throughout its lifespan, the library hosted countless meetings of community and other groups, lectures, theater performances and other events, too.
The end of an era
But, time marches on and by 1962, Milwaukee Public Library prepared a report that called for upgrading many of its branch libraries.
That report suggested a new branch library to replace the South Side Library and the Lincoln Library, 2321 S. 13th St., which would serve about 80,600 Milwaukeeans.
By spring of 1965, the new Forest Home Library was more than a proposal, it was a plan and on Dec. 10, 1966, the South Side Library closed and the new Midcentury Modern library designed by architect Robert Van Lanen of von Grossmann, Burroughs, Van Lanen and Associates opened at 1432 W. Forest Home Ave.
In January 1968, the Common Council approved a plan to allow the Milwaukee Health Department to spend $77,000 to renovate the building to house about 50 people from its pest control, milk inspection and weights and measures divisions into the old library – easing pressure on cramped quarters in the Municipal Building, according to Health commissioner Dr. E. R. Krumbiegel – that appears not to have happened.
Nor did the County Parks Commission get its way, either. They had hoped to tear down the building and create a park on the site.
Perhaps ironically, the 1909 building has outlived its replacement, which was torn down in 2021.
New life
Instead, in 1969, the city moved its Building Mainentance Inspection Office into the shuttered library and it remained there until 1980, when the building was sold to the Inner City Development Project-South, which offered services like taxpayer assistance.
A benefit was held, with music by the late, great Toty Ramos and his La Chazz Orchestra, to help raise funds for the move. In 1983, St. Vincent de Paul leased the basement to house its meal program and it has been there ever since.
Later, Inner City became Southside Residents for Community Development, which merged with the South Community Organization and then the building was home to the Social Development Commission.
Nowadays, St. Vincent de Paul owns the building and leases the upper level to the Vineyard Congregation.
What hasn’t changed is the exterior, which the historic designation report called an, “architecturally significant as a fine example of Neo-Classical Revival design by a prominent local architectural firm. The building is notable among public buildings in Milwaukee for its Roman-Classical design.
“In its physical form and interior layout, the South Branch Library illustrates a rational approach to accommodating the functions of a public library at the period. Clearly defined separate spaces were provided for storing books, checking-out and returning books, and for adult's and children's reading rooms. Its incorporation of a public auditorium serves as reminder of the important role such facilities served in educating, entertaining and acculturating the immigrant population who used them.”
St. Vincent de Paul’s site coordinator Quartterri Wilder is excited to talk about the building’s history as a library, which surely seems like ancient history to most nowadays.
“I grew up down the block right here,” he tells me, as we check out the spaces on the upper level, “and it was always (known as) the food place. I found out it was the library when I first started working here, which was almost six years ago.”
Clearly interested in his neighborhood’s history, Wilder’s face brightens when I mention that directly across the street, where there is now a two-story apartment complex, there stood a public school that was later a Miwaukee Fire Department training center, another example of a civic building that served multiple purposes during its lifetime.
Showing him a photo of it, he heads straight to the window to compare the photo to the current building.
“Ohhhhh yeah,” he says. “We were literally debating the other day because I was like, for the life of me, I can't remember what was there.”
Wilder says once in a while someone who remembers the library will come in, but, he adds, more seem to remember that it was home to a service that distributed clothing to the needy.
That’s yet another service now provided by St. Vincent de Paul on the lower level.
"This is a great old building," says Meal Program Manager Peggy West-Schroder.
"We were happy we could give it a new life and it definitely gets a lot of love."
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.
