Milwaukee Public Library

CETA Arts Program Photographs

The exhibit of “The Spirit of Milwaukee” was a cooperative agreement between the Common Council’s Special Committee on Public Information and the students and faculty of the Milwaukee Center for Photography. The photographs were taken between February and May of 1976 in Milwaukee, documenting Milwaukee life during the 1976 Bicentennial. After the Bicentennial, the City of Milwaukee CETA Arts Program hired student photographers from the Milwaukee Center for Photography to take pictures and document Milwaukee. The Department of City Development would exhibit the photographs and other art created under the program.

Dr. James Cameron Pamphlet Collection

Thirty-eight self-published pamphlets by civil rights activist Dr. James Cameron (1914-2006). Dr. Cameron was the founder of America’s Black Holocaust Museum in Milwaukee. Topics addressed in the pamphlets include slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan, the civil rights movement and Milwaukee police/community relations.

Great Lakes Maritime History Project

An overview of Wisconsin’s maritime history. Includes records on individual ships as well as photographs, postcards and pamphlets related to commerce and tourism on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.

Historic Recipe File

From the 1960s until the 1980s, librarians at the Milwaukee Public Library clipped hundreds of recipes from the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Sentinel. These clipped recipes are the nucleus of the Historic Recipe File digital collection, which provides a glimpse into the local and ethnic foods that were popular in Milwaukee in the second half of the 20th century.

Horace Seaman Wisconsin Infantry Collection

Photographs from Colonel Horace M. Seaman’s service with the Wisconsin National Guard. The majority of the images come from his service with the 4th Wisconsin Infantry in the Spanish-American War of 1898.

Irene Bishop Goggans Collection

The Irene Bishop Goggans collection contains materials pertaining to the African American community in Milwaukee and across the country. Materials collected by Irene Goggans (1926-2017) are mostly from the 1950s to the early 2010s and include newspaper clippings, photographs, event programs, and more.

Milwaukee County Marriage Certificates

This collection of more than 20,000 marriage certificates dating from 1822-1876 was digitized from microfilm and indexed by the Milwaukee County Genealogical Society.

Milwaukee Historic Menus

The Historic Menus digital collection includes a variety of menus from the Milwaukee area from the early twentieth century to the present.

Milwaukee Historic Photos

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.

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 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 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 Waterways

This collection illustrates the role Lake Michigan and Milwaukee’s rivers have played in the history of Milwaukee. Photographs of the harbor and ships from around the world show the variety of materials that passed through the Port over time. Other images illustrate the role the rivers played in the commercial development of the city.

MPL’s Own Archives

MPL’s Own Archives contains the history of the Milwaukee Public Library system. Encompassing written records, photographs, and film the collection offers a look back at how the library has served the community of Milwaukee since its founding. This online portion of the collection contains an interview with Toni Morrison, a handful of PSAs, informational videos, and a partial episode of “Library Playhouse”, a library created TV program.

Remember When

Remember When… was a popular feature in the Milwaukee Journal from 1963 through 1994. Published twice-weekly until 1981 and weekly after that, the feature was prepared by Milwaukee Public Library staff to highlight Milwaukee’s rich and colorful past as preserved in the Historic Photo Collection of the library.

Wisconsin Concert Posters

Posters and flyers advertising a variety of concerts, mostly rock and punk shows that took place in the early 1980s in and around Milwaukee. Milwaukee-area bands represented include Colour Radio, Die Kreuzen and the Violent Femmes.

World War I Military Portraits

This collection of more than 30,000 items includes World War I service records transcribed by the Milwaukee County Chapter of the American War Mothers, portraits of service men and women in military uniform, snapshots of individuals at their homes or serving in the theater of war, and records from the publication A Record of the Heroes of Milwaukee County Who Answered Their Country’s Call in the World War.