Bay View’s Immigrants

From a quiet mid 19th–century farming community to a bustling industrial center along Kinninckinnic Avenue in only twenty years, Bay View’s industrial transformation could not have occurred without the contributions of hundreds of immigrant workers who poured into the community’s foundries, brickyards, machine shops, tanneries and glass factory seeking employment in the last quarter of the 19th century. The first industrial workers in Bay View were recruited from Sheffield, England, for their knowledge of steel production but over the years other immigrant workers from the British Isles, Ireland, Germany, Poland and Italy, among others, would make Bay View one of the most ethnically diverse communities in Milwaukee.