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Bay View Information
Bay View is known for its affordable rents, safety, views of the city
skyline, and proximity to Lake Michigan. Features a heavy concentration of
trendy stores and music venues. Located about 3 miles south of downtown on the
lake, within the area including Kinnickinnic Avenue. Bay View originally sprang
up around the Milwaukee Iron Company rolling mill as a company town. It
incorporated in 1879 (Milwaukee's first suburb) with 2,592 people and 892 acres
of land; but by 1887 Bay View's 4,000 residents voted overwhelmingly to join the
city of Milwaukee, mostly in order to get city services of which water was the
most important. The former village became Milwaukee's 17th ward. It is best know
to labor history as the site of the 1886 Bay View Tragedy.
Bay View is a neighborhood in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, south of the downtown area
and north of the City of St. Francis. The original Village of Bay View is listed
on the National Register of Historic Places as the Bay View Historic District.
According to the designation, it is roughly bounded by Lake Michigan to the
east, Meredith Street to Superior, up to Nock Street and then from Wentworth
Avenue to Prior Avenue.
Although the neighborhood boundaries of Bay View have grown over the years as
more and more people identify with it, the specific boundaries given by the
Milwaukee Neighborhood Identification Project are: along the border of Lake
Michigan, south of Jones Island, from Lincoln Avenue to the north and Howell
Avenue to the west, south to Morgan Avenue changing to Oklahoma Avenue heading
east.
The first permanent European settlement of the Bay View area was in 1834; Horace
Chase, future Milwaukee mayor, is credited as the first permanent settler. In
1855, the Green Bay, Milwaukee and Chicago Rail Road established its first
Milwaukee-area depot in Bay View. In 1868, the Milwaukee Iron Company opened a
plant in the area, and Bay View was established as a company town. By 1879, Bay
View had a population of 2,592, and incorporated as a village, on approx 1.4 sq.
mi. of land. By 1886, Bay View had became a center of workers' rights activism,
the culmination of which was the Bay View Tragedy. A year later, the village's
approximately 4,000 residents voted overwhelmingly to be annexed to the city of
Milwaukee, becoming the city's 17th ward and ending the community's independent
identity. Thenceforth, the village has been a Milwaukee neighborhood.