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Wauwatosa Information
Wauwatosa is a city in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, United States. As of the
2004 census estimate, the city population was 45,602. Wauwatosa is located
immediately west of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and is a part of the Milwaukee
metropolitan area. It is named after the Potawatomi word for firefly.
Wauwatosa contains Milwaukee County's Regional Medical Center, which includes
the Medical College of Wisconsin, Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, and one of
two level-one trauma centers in the state. Other points of interest are the
Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church designed by Frank Lloyd Wright; and the
Memorial Center, built in 1957, which contains a public library, an auditorium,
and the city hall. The Washington Highlands, a residential neighborhood designed
in 1916 by renowned city planner Werner Hegemann, was added to the National
Register of Historic Places in 1989.
The lush Menomonee River Valley of the Wauwatosa area provided a key overland
gateway between the rich glacial farmland of southeastern Wisconsin and the Port
of Milwaukee. In 1835, Charles Hart became the first permanent white settler,
followed by seventeen other families the same year. The following year a United
States Road was built from Milwaukee through Wauwatosa, eventually reaching
Madison.
The Town of Wauwatosa was created by act of the Wisconsin Territorial
Legislature in 1840, and the town government was organized in 1842. The town's
borders originally extended from Greenfield Avenue in the south to Hampton
Avenue in the north, and from 27th Street in the east to the Waukesha County
line in the west, encompassing sections of present-day Milwaukee and West Allis.
Most of the town was farmland through the remainder of the nineteenth century.
In 1849 the Watertown Plank Road was constructed through Wauwatosa, mainly
following the old Madison territorial road. In 1851 Wisconsin's first railroad
(later becoming The Milwaukee Road) established Wauwatosa as its western
terminus. The Village of Wauwatosa was incorporated from the central part of the
Town of Wauwatosa in 1892, and was recharted as the City of Wauwatosa in 1897.
In the 1950s, the City of Wauwatosa more than doubled its size by annexing 8.5
square miles (22 sq km) of land west of the Menomonee River from the Town of
Wauwatosa, which became the home to several large cold storage and regional food
distribution terminals. Industrial plants owned by firms including
Harley-Davidson and Briggs & Stratton were also constructed.
In the past 40 years, western Wauwatosa has become an edge city with an
important commercial and retail district built up along Milwaukee's beltline
Highway 100 and anchored by the Mayfair Mall.
Wauwatosa received some national attention in 1992 when the Wauwatosa Common
Council, threatened with a lawsuit, decided to remove a cross from the City's
seal adopted in 1957.
The city has one public school district, the Wauwatosa School District
High Schools: Wauwatosa West High School and Wauwatosa East High School
Middle Schools: Whitman Middle School and Longfellow Middle School
Elementary Schools: Eisenhower, Jefferson, Lincoln, Madison, McKinley,
Roosevelt, Underwood, Washington, Wilson
There are also numerous Catholic elementary schools in the city: St. Bernard,
St. Joseph, St. Jude, St. Pius X, and Christ King.
According to the 2000 U.S. Census, of Wauwatosa residents 25 years of age and
older, 93.4% were high school graduates or better, and 47.6% had a bachelor's
degree or better.