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View of the lanes at Bluemound Bowl
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Shoe rental at Bluemound Bowl
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Rental bowling balls at Bluemound Bowl
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Bluemound Bowl
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Seating at Bluemound Bowl
The story of how Milwaukee became America’s bowling capital is woven into the same fabric as many of our local institutions, the city’s German heritage. “Bowling was a German cultural activity back in the old country,” said Doug Schmidt, a bowling historian and author of They Came to Bowl: How Milwaukee Became America’s Tenpin Capital. “When the Germans started migrating here after the Civil War—and by the 1880s they were settling in Milwaukee—bowling was an extension of their culture.”
Milwaukee’s strong German roots came together with another factor—the industrial revolution—and began a series of events that would catapult Milwaukee’s rise to prominence in the bowling world. “From the beginning of the industrial revolution up until the 1970s, you can list a who’s who of what industries were based in Milwaukee,” Schmidt said. “Most of their employees looked forward to getting out on any given night of the week to bowl together.”
Then in 1905, the catalyst for what put Milwaukee on the map as the nation’s bowling capital happened. Abraham Lincoln Langtry, a salesman for Northwestern Fuel Company and himself the part owner of a bowling alley, along with Mayor David Rose, successfully lobbied for Milwaukee to host that year’s National Bowling Tournament. Schmidt suspects Mayor Rose’s penchant for turning a blind eye to alcohol and prostitution may have had something to do with the decision.
“I never quite figured out if it was because of Langtry being one of the leaders or if it was because Milwaukee had a reputation for being a wide open town,” Schmidt said of the decision with a laugh.
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Langtry became secretary of the American Bowling Congress in 1907, and in those times, wherever the secretary lived became the national office for the organization. He kept his position for 25 years, and as this happened, the congress kept putting him in bigger offices and deepening Milwaukee’s position in the bowling world.
During the 1960s, the American Bowling Congress collaborated with the Women’s Bowling Congress to build a new combined headquarters in Greendale, which opened in 1971. Around the same time, the sport began growing by leaps and bounds. Schmidt said that by 1981, between the men’s and women’s associations in Milwaukee there were around 200,000 residents of the greater Milwaukee area that were bowling in a sanctioned league, around one quarter of the city’s population.
But when the factories began to leave Milwaukee, bowling also began its decline. “As the factory jobs dried up the marketplace shrunk,” Schmidt said.
In 2005, the Bowling Proprietors Association of America, which is located in Arlington, Texas, gained control of the American Bowling Congress. They decided that both parts of the business should be combined. Instead of moving their 32 employees up to Greendale, they shut down the Milwaukee-area facility and built a new one in Arlington, which opened in November 2008. The building was then sold to Walmart, and Schmidt said that after the move Milwaukee’s reputation as America’s bowling capital was permanently damaged.
In the ensuing years, the entire sport of bowling has declined in popularity due to cultural shifts and technology. “The past decade has really been a period of adjustment,” Schmidt said. “League bowling peaked in the 1980s, and our culture has changed so much since then. In large part due to social media and people being constantly on the go, people don’t want to take the time out to sit and socialize for two and a half or three hours. It’s kind of a sad statement on where our society has gone.”
Bowling leagues have dwindled considerably, and Schmidt said that the game is “evolving from a competitive sport to more of a social type of sport.” This leaves stakeholders in the bowling community struggling to adjust to the changing times.
“Bowling proprietors now are trying to evolve,” Schmidt said. “They’ve gone from running alleys—which is now a totally outdated term—to running centers, which are multimedia type places with upgraded furniture, video rooms, strobe lights and rock music.”
No matter what happens with the sport of bowling, Schmidt said that there will always be one advantage. “No matter how good or bad you are, what other sport can you play where the ball always comes back to you?”
