Research Papers
Villa Uhrig (An excerpt)
Nader Sayadi
The property at 1727 N. 34th Street in Milwaukee is actually a part of a mid-nineteenth century estate, still known by its old name, Villa Uhrig. Franz Joseph Uhrig, the patron of Villa Uhrig, was born in Bavaria, Germany around 1808.[i] He was working as a river rafts man like his ancestors in his native country. In 1836, when he was 30, he immigrated to the US, and stayed in Baltimore, Maryland for a year. Almost one year later, he crossed the Appalachian Mountains and settled in Louisville, Kentucky. In 1838, he moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he was transporting goods between cities on the rivers of the Mississippi watershed by his own flat-boat.[ii]. In 1840, he had enough money to replace the flat boat with a steamer called “Pearl.” It was the time when his younger brother Ignatz (should not be confused with Ignatz their father) who immigrated to the US a year earlier, was helping him on the ferry. In 1842, thirty-six years old Franz Joseph Uhrig got married to Walbrga[iii] Soderer in St. Louis.[iv]
In 1844 he purchased a piece of land in St. Louis[v] and co-established a brewery with Anton Kraut.[vi] A year later Josephine, Uhrig’s daughter, was born. After Kraut’s death in 1849, Franz Joseph Uhrig sold his steamer and concentrated on the brewery. He bought another property a few years later,[vii] on which he developed his brewery that included large vaults to store lager beer, known as Uhrig Caves, and a beer-garden which became one of the earliest resorts in St. Louis.[viii] In 1850, thirty-nine year old Joseph Uhrig was living with his wife Walbrga (twenty-eight years old), his five year old daughter and seven other young males[ix] who were probably working with him[x].
Franz Joseph Uhrig’s action in different stages of his life reveal a pattern which many immigrants also shared. In the first stage of his life, he was a very mobile person, working on rivers. Either in Germany or the U.S., he was transporting goods until he concentrated on brewery business in St. Louis. Being mobile on the rivers and also immigration to America itself was a physical necessity for him in order to achieve a better life and particularly financial stability. This is when he ended up becoming sedentary with a more profitable job in brewery. This shift not only happened in physical mobility, but also in social mobility. The working class young Uhrig became a rich elite who could afford to build a summer resort in suburban Milwaukee while having a brewery and mansion in St. Louis and hiring workers and servants. These changes of his performance can be summarize in socio-physical mobility to stability; however he kept his mobility performance in the way in which he was moving to his summer resort every summer.
With the expansion of the brewery business, Franz Joseph Uhrig was moving back and forth between Milwaukee and St. Louis to obtain barley. Following his financial success in the early 1850s, he purchased a twenty acre piece of land at the western periphery of Milwaukee in 1854.[xi] The lot was bounded by the Lisbon plank toll road (Lisbon Avenue) on the north, Walnut Street on the south, the Milwaukee Road tracks on the east (near 30th Street), and Western Avenue (35th Street) on the west, for one hundred dollars an acre. This location, later known as Walnut Hill, was only considered a part of the city of Milwaukee in 1890s (the first map which includes this region is 1898) and the Western Avenue was known as the western limit of Milwaukee in 1894. This land was the place where he constructed a villa and other related spaces in the property to use it as his family’s summer resort. In 1870, twenty-five year old Josephine was married to Otto K. Lademan, a civil war veteran and brewer who was originally from Prussia. Lademan became the next head of the family after Franz Joseph Uhrig died in summer of 1874 at the villa in Milwaukee. The last decade of the nineteenth century was not only the time when Walnut Hill was first considered as a part of the city of Milwaukee, but also after Franz Joseph's death, the brewery and other family properties were sold, and the Lademan/Uhrig family moved to the villa in Milwaukee to stay year-round. In 1900, the villa was the permanent residence of Josephine Uhrig, Otto Lademan and their three children. Prior to that, Uhrig family were living with servants, workers, and other Uhrig and Lademan family members in different periods of time.
Franz Joseph Uhrig built up the villa at the western nine acres section of the property right outside of Milwaukee. The two story villa was built in Italianate style (which was popular in 1850s). On a slope at the southern end of the lot, Uhrig built his mansion high on the property facing north and parallel to the Lisbon plank-road. A columned porch was attached to the front of the house. At the heart of the property was a twenty-foot tall cast iron fountain (shipped in pieces from Philadelphia by Uhrig). A gravel driveway was cut south from the Lisbon Plank Road and it then split halfway up the hill to form a large circle which swept past the front of the villa. A section of the circle - directly in front of the house - was paved with brick. The circle surrounded the fountain. The wrought iron gates of the main entrance of the property were added later when they were shipped from Uhrig’s brewery in St. Louis with the iron fence and posts.
Other parts of the property were added to the estate later to build up an elite rural suburban mansion: a stable-barn at the far east, a brick gardener’s residence at the far west, a garden pavilion at the east front and an out-house (called the "eagle house") at the back of the villa. Later came a special building for pheasants, a chicken house and a spectacular three-story-high pump house with a windmill on top.
Gardening and outdoor features of the property that were important components were influenced by Downing’s idea of modern or natural style, instead of formal and geometric style of landscape design[xii]. A footpath bisected the central circle and went north from the front door, passing between two rows of lilacs, to the fountain surrounded by benches, and “spreading away from this focal point were two apple orchards, numerous flower beds, gooseberries, currants and two rows of poplar trees which formed an "allee" through which Uhrig would later take his daily walks.”
Uhrig’s intervention of the environment in this piece of land was actually his intentional motivation to shape the landscape as a suitable scene for his family’s performance as elite. The Villa Uhrig property was altered extensively in approximately thirty years. In 1894, three years before the Uhrig widow’s death, the original twenty-acre lot was still physically integrated; however the impacts of the city growth, subdivisions, and change of the performance had already begun. Within the nine-acre Villa Uhrig territory, the lattice garden house at the gravel drive way and the wind mill at the far northwestern corner of the estate were standing. Two other unrecognized small structures also existed between the villa itself and the stable. The entire southern edge of the long east-west lot was subdivided into thirty-nine narrow lots facing south to Walnut Street. One single larger lot at the far eastern end of the new row of lots which was occupied by the West Side Manf’g’. Co., which included a two-story manufacturing unit for sash, door, and blind production; its adjacent one-story buildings; and a detached two-story warehouse. In this time the eastern half of the estate was the subject of construction. Besides these alterations, the row of subdivided lots were very close to the villa and its other related structures such as the stable and gardener’s house at the western part of the property. The new lots not only were almost touching these two structures, but were also following the perpendicular geometrical logic of the urban fabric. In this time, the loss of the former stage and the production of new multiple stages was already in process.[xiii]
In 1898, N. 33rd Street[xiv], and in 1910, N. 32nd Street were already cut through the twenty-acre estate, and structures occupied most of the subdivided lots. These structures were mostly residential except for some commercial buildings along W. Lisbon Avenue and the Kingsley M. E. Church at the corner of N. 33rd and W. Walnut Streets. Though the western remaining section of the original lot still included the villa and related structures and spaces, among the structures, the wind mill and the gardener’s house were replaced by new construction, and the lattice garden house at the heart of the property was gone. Beside the stable and its adjacent smaller buildings, another small structure was added at the back of the villa on its axis. Following a high rate of development and construction in the new neighborhood in the early 1900s, new lots at the northern, western, and eastern margins of the property blocked the property. In 1913, N. 34th Street was also cut through the property to connect Lisbon Avenue with Walnut Street. Other parts of the estate were slowly subdivided, sold, and soon occupied by bungalows and duplexes. In this process all the features of the estate were demolished but the structure of the villa. Finally in 1943, the Lademans left the villa.
The interior spaces of the villa were explicitly divided. The lower level housed the kitchen, servants’ residences, storage and cellar, and a cistern. Not only was the service part of the villa sharply divided from the rest, but also the working and living places of the servants. The gardener of the estate had his own building at the far west end of the property. Food was served in the dining room at the first floor and usually lifted up by a dumbwaiter. Other daily living spaces were located on the first level, and the bedrooms and more private spaces were on the upper level. With the increase in the number of the residents, particularly newborn family members, there was a need for more room in the villa. Because of that, two wings were added to the building. After the Lademan family left the villa in 1944, since the building was already big for a single family, the new owners subdivided the spaces within the villa and rented them out to different tenants. Aside from the need for more kitchens and bathrooms for each new unit, the physical alteration of the space was not drastic like it was for the entire estate.
Although like the entire estate, the acts of the people in the villa were occurring around one single family’s performance during the summer, the scene was slightly different in the rest of year when the Uhrig family were in St. Louis. In that period of time, Lisbett, the care-taker and the only resident of the villa in Uhrig’s absence, could act more freely in the villa. If her life was spatially limited to the lower level, she could freely explore the entire empty villa, also without serving the owners. In those times, she temporarily had an in-between role: both the owner and the servant.
Performance changes altered the villa’s structure in another way. Between Franz Joseph Uhrig’s death and the Lademans leaving the villa, some performance changes had already occurred. For instance, after a while, meals were served on the ground floor, as it became too much trouble to haul food up on the dumbwaiter to the formal dining room, But the major performance changes happened when the last Lademans left the villa. The united singular performance of the various actors within the villa were replaced with multiple semi-independent performances. If the villa functioned as a single scene for the Uhrig family and the other related actors, now it was subdivided into multiple parallel performances of different tenants who were not necessarily as a part of a single coherent act.
In 1844 he purchased a piece of land in St. Louis[v] and co-established a brewery with Anton Kraut.[vi] A year later Josephine, Uhrig’s daughter, was born. After Kraut’s death in 1849, Franz Joseph Uhrig sold his steamer and concentrated on the brewery. He bought another property a few years later,[vii] on which he developed his brewery that included large vaults to store lager beer, known as Uhrig Caves, and a beer-garden which became one of the earliest resorts in St. Louis.[viii] In 1850, thirty-nine year old Joseph Uhrig was living with his wife Walbrga (twenty-eight years old), his five year old daughter and seven other young males[ix] who were probably working with him[x].
Franz Joseph Uhrig’s action in different stages of his life reveal a pattern which many immigrants also shared. In the first stage of his life, he was a very mobile person, working on rivers. Either in Germany or the U.S., he was transporting goods until he concentrated on brewery business in St. Louis. Being mobile on the rivers and also immigration to America itself was a physical necessity for him in order to achieve a better life and particularly financial stability. This is when he ended up becoming sedentary with a more profitable job in brewery. This shift not only happened in physical mobility, but also in social mobility. The working class young Uhrig became a rich elite who could afford to build a summer resort in suburban Milwaukee while having a brewery and mansion in St. Louis and hiring workers and servants. These changes of his performance can be summarize in socio-physical mobility to stability; however he kept his mobility performance in the way in which he was moving to his summer resort every summer.
With the expansion of the brewery business, Franz Joseph Uhrig was moving back and forth between Milwaukee and St. Louis to obtain barley. Following his financial success in the early 1850s, he purchased a twenty acre piece of land at the western periphery of Milwaukee in 1854.[xi] The lot was bounded by the Lisbon plank toll road (Lisbon Avenue) on the north, Walnut Street on the south, the Milwaukee Road tracks on the east (near 30th Street), and Western Avenue (35th Street) on the west, for one hundred dollars an acre. This location, later known as Walnut Hill, was only considered a part of the city of Milwaukee in 1890s (the first map which includes this region is 1898) and the Western Avenue was known as the western limit of Milwaukee in 1894. This land was the place where he constructed a villa and other related spaces in the property to use it as his family’s summer resort. In 1870, twenty-five year old Josephine was married to Otto K. Lademan, a civil war veteran and brewer who was originally from Prussia. Lademan became the next head of the family after Franz Joseph Uhrig died in summer of 1874 at the villa in Milwaukee. The last decade of the nineteenth century was not only the time when Walnut Hill was first considered as a part of the city of Milwaukee, but also after Franz Joseph's death, the brewery and other family properties were sold, and the Lademan/Uhrig family moved to the villa in Milwaukee to stay year-round. In 1900, the villa was the permanent residence of Josephine Uhrig, Otto Lademan and their three children. Prior to that, Uhrig family were living with servants, workers, and other Uhrig and Lademan family members in different periods of time.
Franz Joseph Uhrig built up the villa at the western nine acres section of the property right outside of Milwaukee. The two story villa was built in Italianate style (which was popular in 1850s). On a slope at the southern end of the lot, Uhrig built his mansion high on the property facing north and parallel to the Lisbon plank-road. A columned porch was attached to the front of the house. At the heart of the property was a twenty-foot tall cast iron fountain (shipped in pieces from Philadelphia by Uhrig). A gravel driveway was cut south from the Lisbon Plank Road and it then split halfway up the hill to form a large circle which swept past the front of the villa. A section of the circle - directly in front of the house - was paved with brick. The circle surrounded the fountain. The wrought iron gates of the main entrance of the property were added later when they were shipped from Uhrig’s brewery in St. Louis with the iron fence and posts.
Other parts of the property were added to the estate later to build up an elite rural suburban mansion: a stable-barn at the far east, a brick gardener’s residence at the far west, a garden pavilion at the east front and an out-house (called the "eagle house") at the back of the villa. Later came a special building for pheasants, a chicken house and a spectacular three-story-high pump house with a windmill on top.
Gardening and outdoor features of the property that were important components were influenced by Downing’s idea of modern or natural style, instead of formal and geometric style of landscape design[xii]. A footpath bisected the central circle and went north from the front door, passing between two rows of lilacs, to the fountain surrounded by benches, and “spreading away from this focal point were two apple orchards, numerous flower beds, gooseberries, currants and two rows of poplar trees which formed an "allee" through which Uhrig would later take his daily walks.”
Uhrig’s intervention of the environment in this piece of land was actually his intentional motivation to shape the landscape as a suitable scene for his family’s performance as elite. The Villa Uhrig property was altered extensively in approximately thirty years. In 1894, three years before the Uhrig widow’s death, the original twenty-acre lot was still physically integrated; however the impacts of the city growth, subdivisions, and change of the performance had already begun. Within the nine-acre Villa Uhrig territory, the lattice garden house at the gravel drive way and the wind mill at the far northwestern corner of the estate were standing. Two other unrecognized small structures also existed between the villa itself and the stable. The entire southern edge of the long east-west lot was subdivided into thirty-nine narrow lots facing south to Walnut Street. One single larger lot at the far eastern end of the new row of lots which was occupied by the West Side Manf’g’. Co., which included a two-story manufacturing unit for sash, door, and blind production; its adjacent one-story buildings; and a detached two-story warehouse. In this time the eastern half of the estate was the subject of construction. Besides these alterations, the row of subdivided lots were very close to the villa and its other related structures such as the stable and gardener’s house at the western part of the property. The new lots not only were almost touching these two structures, but were also following the perpendicular geometrical logic of the urban fabric. In this time, the loss of the former stage and the production of new multiple stages was already in process.[xiii]
In 1898, N. 33rd Street[xiv], and in 1910, N. 32nd Street were already cut through the twenty-acre estate, and structures occupied most of the subdivided lots. These structures were mostly residential except for some commercial buildings along W. Lisbon Avenue and the Kingsley M. E. Church at the corner of N. 33rd and W. Walnut Streets. Though the western remaining section of the original lot still included the villa and related structures and spaces, among the structures, the wind mill and the gardener’s house were replaced by new construction, and the lattice garden house at the heart of the property was gone. Beside the stable and its adjacent smaller buildings, another small structure was added at the back of the villa on its axis. Following a high rate of development and construction in the new neighborhood in the early 1900s, new lots at the northern, western, and eastern margins of the property blocked the property. In 1913, N. 34th Street was also cut through the property to connect Lisbon Avenue with Walnut Street. Other parts of the estate were slowly subdivided, sold, and soon occupied by bungalows and duplexes. In this process all the features of the estate were demolished but the structure of the villa. Finally in 1943, the Lademans left the villa.
The interior spaces of the villa were explicitly divided. The lower level housed the kitchen, servants’ residences, storage and cellar, and a cistern. Not only was the service part of the villa sharply divided from the rest, but also the working and living places of the servants. The gardener of the estate had his own building at the far west end of the property. Food was served in the dining room at the first floor and usually lifted up by a dumbwaiter. Other daily living spaces were located on the first level, and the bedrooms and more private spaces were on the upper level. With the increase in the number of the residents, particularly newborn family members, there was a need for more room in the villa. Because of that, two wings were added to the building. After the Lademan family left the villa in 1944, since the building was already big for a single family, the new owners subdivided the spaces within the villa and rented them out to different tenants. Aside from the need for more kitchens and bathrooms for each new unit, the physical alteration of the space was not drastic like it was for the entire estate.
Although like the entire estate, the acts of the people in the villa were occurring around one single family’s performance during the summer, the scene was slightly different in the rest of year when the Uhrig family were in St. Louis. In that period of time, Lisbett, the care-taker and the only resident of the villa in Uhrig’s absence, could act more freely in the villa. If her life was spatially limited to the lower level, she could freely explore the entire empty villa, also without serving the owners. In those times, she temporarily had an in-between role: both the owner and the servant.
Performance changes altered the villa’s structure in another way. Between Franz Joseph Uhrig’s death and the Lademans leaving the villa, some performance changes had already occurred. For instance, after a while, meals were served on the ground floor, as it became too much trouble to haul food up on the dumbwaiter to the formal dining room, But the major performance changes happened when the last Lademans left the villa. The united singular performance of the various actors within the villa were replaced with multiple semi-independent performances. If the villa functioned as a single scene for the Uhrig family and the other related actors, now it was subdivided into multiple parallel performances of different tenants who were not necessarily as a part of a single coherent act.
- [i] Based on the information of a grave in St. Louis, MO, which is attributed to him, the date of his birth is mentioned as July 02, 1808. (http://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GSln=UH&GSpartial=1&GSbyrel=all&GSst=26&GScntry=4&GSsr=561&GRid=6216125&, visited at May 5, 2014). On the other hand, in St. Louis census data sheets, his date of birth is mentioned as about 1811 in the census of 1850, about 1812 in the census of 1860, and about 1809 in the census of 1870.
- [ii] H. Russell Zimmermann, Magnificent Milwaukee: Architectural Treasures, 1850-1920 (Milwaukee: Milwaukee Public Museum, 1987), 11. For instance, Uhrig was transporting logs from his elder brother’s (Andrew Uhrig) farm at Hardin, Calhoun County, Illinois. See: William Hyde and Howard Louis Conard, Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis, A Compendium of History and Biography for Ready Reference, Vol. 4, Part 2. (New York: Southern History Co, 1899), 2327.
- [iii] In census data sheets, her name is also mentioned as “Walburger.”
- [iv] Hyde and Conard, Encyclopedia of the History of St. Louis, 2329.
- [v] 18th street and Market street, St. Louis, MO.
- [vi] 1844, the same year as his father passed away.
- [vii] Washington and Jefferson Avenue, St. Louis, MO.
- [viii] Zimmermann, Magnificent Milwaukee, 11.
- [ix] All between 26-32 years old.
- [x] Census 1850
- [xi] It is also said that Joseph Schlitz encouraged him to build a villa in Milwaukee. See: Zimmermann, Magnificent Milwaukee, 11.
- [xii] Schuyler, David. 1996. Apostle of Taste: Andrew Jackson Downing, 1815-1852. David Schuyler. Ed. Center for American Places. Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
- [xiii] Sanborn-Perris Map Co., Insurance maps of Milwaukee [map], 1: 600 (New York: Sanborn-Perris Map Co. Limited, 1894), Vol. 2, Sheets 180 and 182.
- [xiv] Alfred G. Wright, Wright’s map of Milwaukee [map]. Scale not given. Milwaukee: The Milwaukee Litho. & Engr. Co. 1898.