(Since this ended up being a rather long post, I’ve decided to break it into two parts. The first will cover the creation of the current flag, and next week’s post will talk about the efforts to replace it.)
PART ONE
Milwaukee ’s official city flag has been taking a beating lately. In a recent TED Talk, Roman Mars – who must be some kind of style expert, since his website uses a picture of his beard as its banner – called the flag “one of the biggest train wrecks in vexillological history.” Furthermore, a movement is afoot to change the flag. Milwaukee Magazine supports a change, saying “many of the symbols incorporated in the [current] city flag have been relegated to the dustbins of history.” So does this group, who says that the “ Milwaukee is a great city” and “deserves a great flag.” The history of the banner, however, suggests the old blue and gold (and red and dark blue and white) is used to being abused. Throughout its sixty year history, the flag has had many detractors and few defenders.
Long before the flag was adopted, the city had a kind of crisis of confidence over not having a flag. The current flag came into being after half-century of various efforts to establish an official city banner. It began in the late 1890s, when many US cities were adopting flags, and the issue popped up at least five times over the next forty years. The most prominent effort seems to have been made in 1928 when the Hamburg America Transit Line launched a new vessel called the Milwaukee . The company asked the city for a banner to fly on the ship, but the city had nothing to contribute. News items on the incident noted that a design for an official city flag was submitted in 1917 but never was approved by the common council. This article mentions a flag under consideration, “composed of alternate bars of blue and green with a red circle in the center containing a cream colored letter M.”
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My very poor MS Paint rendition of what the proposed 1917 flag might have looked like.
In 1942, another effort was made at adopting a city flag. Although his original intention was to have the flag ready for the city’s centennial in 1946, Ald. Fred Meyers would end up pressing the issue for the next thirteen years before the present flag was finally adopted in 1955. The drive for an official flag finally looked like it had worked in 1950, when a design contest for the flag was announced, with a prize of a $100 US savings bond offered for the winning design. 153 official entries were received. The Milwaukee Journal reported that beer was the most frequent theme on the designs, with other common themes involving industry, the county parks, City Hall, seagulls, and the harbor. One of the more earthy entries featured “mama and papa” sitting at a picnic table, enjoying a couple of beers while papa shouting “Prosit!” with a hiccup.
And the winner was… no one! The committee tasked with picking the winner found none of the entries to be worthy of enshrinement. However, Ald. Fred Steffan, a member of the city art committee, fancied himself as something of artist as well. With the commission’s approval, Steffan worked various elements of the some of the finalist flags into his own design which, by 1954, had been approved by the city and was officially adopted as the city flag in 1955.
Members of the City Art Commission review entries in the city flag design contest in 1950. All submitted designs were eventually rejected. Ald. Fred Steffan, who would ultimately design the official city banner, is on the far left. Milwaukee Journal, July 19, 1950
The result was, well, kind of mess. The lake and a cargo ship (with an improbably tall mast) are represented on its lower half, topped by a skyline that features County Stadium, City Hall, the Milwaukee Arena, and a variety of factories and churches. Looming over all that like a sun is a huge gear, inset with the city’s Civil War banner, a cartoon Native American that looks like something a TV station might have shown after it had completed its broadcast day, and a… hell, I don’t even know what that last little chotchkee is supposed to be. A stalk of barley and a vertical “1846” sit to each side and “ MILWAUKEE
