There was probably a district of sin in Milwaukee before it even became a city. The earliest known references to such an area—an effort by the Common Council to take action against “houses of ill-fame”—date to 1850 and point to an area in modern-day Downtown, near the Milwaukee River. The fact that this area had become a political problem by 1850, as Milwaukee was in the midst of a transition from a rugged western outpost to a proper city, suggests that the district had most likely established itself during the early days of the village, as single, laboring men were drawn to the rapidly growing area.
Within a decade, this area would become popularly known as “River Street,” for the waterside road along which it was centered. The district was as much a working neighborhood as any in the city and was perhaps home to the only industry in Milwaukee that was managed primarily by women. And, while it was an industry patronized by men from all classes (including politicians and business leaders), its illicit nature did incite a spree of moral panicking that led to occasional raids and arrests—though jail terms appear to have been rare. In 1858, the Milwaukee Sentinel warned, “an army of these vice people have established themselves in this city.”
In the post-Civil War years, Milwaukee’s Downtown vice district expanded. The Eastown “River Street” district established its borders as Johnson Street (now Highland) on the north, Oneida Street (now Wells) on the south and Market Street to the east. Meanwhile, a new brothel district emerged just across the river along Wells Street and quickly became populated with dozens of lower-end houses that catered to the area’s workingmen.
Tolerating Vice
The first major efforts at eradicating this “social evil” from Downtown Milwaukee were made in the mid-1880s, by which point it was estimated by city officials that as many as 95 brothels were operating in the area without much trouble from the police. But the rhetoric of the reformers never quite matched their ability to enforce the law, and, by the end of the decade, Chief of Police John Janssen had decided it best to simply allow the trade to exist within its existing boundaries and enforce a form of unofficial police oversight to ensure that the occupants of what people were now calling “the Badlands” would behave themselves.
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The result of this new policy was a part of the city in which prostitution was essentially legal and regulated by police—just as with any other commercial trade. This idea was not unique to Milwaukee; as many as 100 other large American cities had similar “segregated districts” around this time. Flamboyant David Rose, elected mayor in 1898, is often credited with making Milwaukee a wide-open town. But in reality, Rose merely oversaw the growth of an already steady niche industry. He even added a few regulations of his own creation to the district, including restrictions on allowing prostitutes to ride with customers in open carriages on the city streets. “The gaudy dress of the harlot,” Mayor Rose said, “is not a good thing to expose to the sunlight.”
In 1912, a reform-minded Socialist administration was swept into office, partially on a pledge to do away with the existing policy on the Badlands. Their drive made for a big show but was only marginally successful, as a 1914 state investigation into conditions of vice in Wisconsin found that the Badlands brothels were operating nearly as openly as ever, and that houses of prostitution—their keepers now favoring bribery over cooperation with city officials—had spread to nearly all parts of the city.
During Prohibition and the Great Depression, it seemed that the city’s attention was drawn away from combating vice in Downtown. It was not until the U.S. entered World War II that the city would again focus on the district. But this time, it was as a matter of public health and national security: A soldier who contracted venereal disease could not join the war effort, and with houses of prostitution thought to be the primary source of such infections, cracking down on vice became part of the larger fight against tyranny.
Downtown Hot Spots
In the post-war years, new forms of commercialized sex began to appear Downtown. Adult magazines and dirty novels could be found in bookstores and on newsstands, and a number of hotels and restaurants became known as hot spots for both male and female prostitutes. In 1960, the Princess Theater on north Third Street—one of the Milwaukee’s grandest movie houses when it opened in 1909—began to run adults-only programming full-time and, over the next several years, a handful of other Downtown theaters began to dabble with sex films. But the action in Downtown was still rather restrained; police raids kept the area on edge, and Milwaukee’s movie censor board trimmed every bit of nudity and each lurid embrace from films before they were permitted to play in the city.
In the late-’60s, the damn finally burst as a lawsuit by city theater operators stripped the censor board of its authority, opening the way for a wave of X-rated and hardcore films to overtake Downtown. Go-go bars, peep shows and dirty book stores could be found in all corners of the former Badlands—even along the once-regal shopping district along west Wisconsin Avenue. In addition to the locals who patronized this area, there was also a continuous stream of customers from the Union Depot on St. Paul Avenue (now the Intermodal Station), where conventioneers and sailors from the Great Lakes Naval Academy would arrive with money in their pockets and sin on their minds.
In the 1980s, the city finally got serious about rehabilitating Downtown, and a wave of new development—most notably the Shops at Grand Avenue Mall—finally chased away the last remnants of the old “Badlands” days. Slowly, the old spaces of the district were cleared away and rebuilt, with the neighborhood’s old masters of sin and vice nothing more than little-recalled memories.
The Fight Against Strip Clubs
Most of the brick-and-mortar remnants of the Downtown vice district were gone by the end of the ’80s, and the city has since seemed intent on keeping such establishments from ever returning. The most controversial aspect of this has been a near 20-year-long fight against a proposed strip club on Old World Third Street.
In the summer of 2000, the Velvet Room, an Old World Third Street nightclub, sought to gain the first strip club license issued to a Downtown establishment since Art’s Performing Center opened on Juneau Avenue in 1974. Mayor John Norquist and area business leaders opposed the idea, and the Milwaukee Common Council refused to grant the license.
The proposed location of the club, 730 N. Old World Third St., had long been in the midst of adults-only Downtown entertainment. For more than 25 years, the next-door Princess Theater ran adults-only films and was Downtown’s only hardcore porn movie theater from the mid-’70s until its closing in 1986. The theater was razed the same year, but an outline of the Princess’ roof can still be seen on the north-facing side of the building at 730 N. Old World Third St. Just to the north of the Princess sat the Brass Rail Tavern, a go-go bar which some speculate had connections to Milwaukee organized crime.
A Revival of Adult Entertainment Downtown?
In recent years, the strip club debate has again come to center on this location. Silk Exotic—with locations at 11400 W. Silver Spring Road as well as in both Madison and Juneau—has sought to expand into Downtown for years, the 730 N. Old World Third location being the subject of several applications for a strip club license from the city. A series of lawsuits by the prospective operators of a Downtown strip club resulted in nearly $1 million being paid out by the city and ultimately led to a settlement last May that granted the Silk group a strip club license for 730 N. Old World Third in exchange for dropping their on-going suits.
The week after the settlement, the city denied an application from the operators of The Ladybug Club, 618 N. Water St., to hold occasional burlesque shows and stripper reviews, but it seems that the road has been paved for the return of adult entertainment to Downtown Milwaukee. In late December, the owner of the building at 730 N. Old World Third applied for the city permits necessary for renovating the interior of the building. Neither the building owner nor Silk Exotic responded to requests for comment on the progress of the project.
