Running south of the Menomonee Valley down to Greenfield Avenue and reaching from Layton Avenue out to Miller Park Way, the Silver City Neighborhood remains something of a well-kept secret. But just as the hospitality of National Avenue attracted laborers from the Valley’s mills and factories back in the 1880s—it was the silver coins they spent freely in the saloons there that gave the neighborhood its name—it has again become a destination for Milwaukeeans in search of either an evening out or a place to call home.
Of course, it’s more than just whiskey and beer now being served on National Avenue. With the recent opening of Bamboo, a Thai and Laotian restaurant, Silver City’s main street is now home to a variety of international cuisine. Celia Benton, economic development manager of Layton Boulevard West Neighbors, Inc., calls her neighborhood “the international destination of Milwaukee” and says its dining options will play a major role in the continued development of the Silver City brand.
The recent growth of Silver City is about more than food. In 2010, the Valley Passage was re-opened, once again connecting the neighborhood to the Menomonee Valley. Three years later, a decade-long project to convert a Brownfield remediation site into parkland was completed, resulting in Three Bridges Park. Three Bridges is the largest city-owned park and has become a major part of the draw to Silver City. “We’ve really seen [West] Pierce Street explode in the last few years,” Benton said. The street is home to the Valley branch of the Three Bridges-adjacent Urban Ecology Center. “That was huge.”
The biggest draw to Silver City might be the community itself. It is a genuinely diverse neighborhood—about two-thirds Latino and one-quarter Caucasian with smaller groups of Asians and African Americans. Benton says that the neighborhood retains a fair number of old European families who settled there a century ago and has also become a destination for Latino families looking to put down roots.
Benton looks forward to the continued growth of Silver City, both in its commercial spaces (a hybrid coffee/custom bike shop will be opening in March) and in its community identity. “Having that thing to belong to not only feels good,” Benton said, “but also helps to identify what [Silver City] means beyond just the name.”
To more and more people, Silver City has come to mean “home.”
