Selections from the Milwaukee Public Library’s Historic Photo Collection. The full collection includes over 50,000 photographs of Milwaukee dating from the late 19th century to the present.
Browse All Collections
Milwaukee Historic Trade Cards
Printed color trade cards distributed by Milwaukee businesses. This collection, housed in the Milwaukee Public Library’s Richard E. and Lucile Krug Rare Books Room, provides a snapshot of Milwaukee’s retail and service economy in the late 19th century.
Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design
Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design’s Guido Brink collection contains ephemera concerning the life and artwork of Midwest artist and educator Guido Peter Brink (1913-2002) in addition to the art collection endowed to the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design from his estate.
Milwaukee Leaders
The Milwaukee Leaders Collection began in 1989 as a photo exhibit at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Milwaukee Public Library Neighborhood Library titled “Black Role Models in Milwaukee.” The honorees were selected by the community as exemplifying leading citizens for their own generation and those to follow.
Milwaukee LGBT Oral History Project Interviews
Oral history interviews conducted by the Milwaukee LGBT History Project 2003-2007. Interviewees describe their coming out experiences, the Gay Liberation Movement in Milwaukee, early LGBT organizations, the impact of feminism on LGBT politics, and LGBT social activities.
Milwaukee Maps
Various maps of the City of Milwaukee and the greater metro area, including population, transit and street maps, from the 1870s through the 1970s.
Milwaukee Mayors
The Milwaukee Mayors digital collection is an adaptation of a volume of images and information collected by Library staff to form the Biographical Sketches of the Mayors of the City of Milwaukee. Created more than 40 years ago, it has been updated with images of recent mayors.
Milwaukee Medical College
Course catalogs and commencement programs from the Milwaukee Medical College and School of Dentistry. In 1913, Milwaukee Medical College merged with the Wisconsin College of Physicians and Surgeons to become the Marquette University School of Medicine and later the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Milwaukee Neighborhoods – Photos and Maps 1885-1992
Images of Milwaukee neighborhoods from the Far Northwest Side to the Far South Side, providing a visual documentation of the development of the city of Milwaukee from the mid-1880s to the early 1990s. The image collection is accompanied by 12 maps of Milwaukee from the holdings of the American Geographical Society Library.
Milwaukee Polonia: The Roman Kwasniewski Photographs
More than 30,000 photographs by Roman Kwasniewski, who worked as a studio photographer in the Polish-American community on Milwaukee’s south side from 1907-1947, documenting social events such as First Communions, Confirmations, graduations, weddings, and anniversaries as well as day-to-day life in the neighborhood. Together, these photographs offer a portrait of Milwaukee’s second largest ethnic group in the first half of the 20th century.
