With the emergence of Bender Park and other development gaining momentum along Oak Creek’s lakefront, the next chapter of the Carrollville neighborhood in the southeast corner of Milwaukee County could be that community’s finest hour.
Carrollville will have come full circle since it was established as a “company town” in the 1890s.
The historic neighborhood is bounded by Lake Michigan to the east, the MMSD South Shore sewerage treatment plant to the north, Chicago Road to the west and Ryan Road to the south.
For more than a century, the neighborhood’s history has ebbed and flowed with commerce and culture. The first known company to be located in what was then a remote frontier of Milwaukee County was the Lakeside Distillery founded by John Francis Carroll in 1893.
Prohibition brought an end to the whiskey plant, but another factory took its place as the premier employer in Carrollville.
“Near the end of the nineteenth century, Milwaukee tanners, including Charles Pfister and Fred Vogel Jr., formed a cooperative to make glue from portions of animal hides. This process resulted in a strong odor, so the operation was confined to an area in the southern part of the county several miles from downtown Milwaukee. These men chose Carrollville for several reasons besides moving the smell away from their city – a need for cheap land, convenient access to the railroad and Lake Michigan water. Automobiles had not yet been invented when U.S. Glue started operating in June 1899,” wrote author Jim Cech in his book, “Oak Creek: Fifty Years of Progress.”
Dirty jobs
As you can imagine, the glue factory was by all accounts a terrible, difficult, disgusting and even toxic workplace. Where would the company find workers willing to be exposed to noxious chemicals and brutal working conditions?
Waves of immigration brought Latino workers from Texas and Mexico to Carrollville to take those jobs in the early part of the 1900s.
In 1933, the U.S. Glue & Gelatin plant was sold to the Peter Cooper Corp. of Gowana, N.Y.
The company built its company town, replete with rows of small houses to be rented by its Hispanic workers and a company store. The firm also operated a bath house for workers, since few of the modest houses had indoor plumbing. Children were bathed on Friday evenings. On Saturdays, the women used the bath house in the morning, and the men used it in the afternoon, according to a neighborhood research project led by former Oak Creek High School teacher Robert Morrow.
As an Oak Creek native, I became friends in the 1970s with the children and grandchildren of several Latino immigrants to Carrollville. I recall how quaint their small homes were, but I also remember an undeniable sense of Christian faith, family and pride.
“I think the Hispanic population assimilated very well into Oak Creek, into our schools. They’re very proud families, proud of their culture. It goes back to the whole thing about family. Because it was family-based, it was a neat and tidy area,” recalled Tom Bauer, who grew up near Carrollville and served as Oak Creek’s police chief before retiring earlier this year. “The neighborhood’s gone through transitions. It’s got a proud heritage. We (the police) never had a problem with the residents of that area. It was a very interesting community that held itself in high regard. It got a lot of bad rep because of the smells that came out of there from the glue factory.”
New life?
Along the way, companies such as Hynite Corp. and Newport Chemical Co. also employed Carrollville’s Latinos.
However, work at the glue factory and the other plants in Carrollville declined in the 1970s.
In 1976, Peter Cooper was sold to Roussellot, a French firm.
The factory was closed by 1985. Nearly two years later, firefighters responded to a third-shift call at the neighboring Allis Chalmers-U.S. Fluidcarbon Lab, and the fire destroyed several parts of the vacant glue factory.
For years, the neighborhood declined as the jobs were eliminated and other people moved into the low-rent homes.
Urban legends grew about the ghosts of workers who had died in Carrollville. Curious teens often staged parties amid the fenced-off ruins.
The companies and their chemicals contaminated the soil, but a plan has begun to cap the site with clean fill (see accompanying story).
It may take another generation to completely revive Carrollville, but Bauer is optimistic that the emerging “master plan” consensus to revive the neighborhood ultimately will succeed.
