Soul of a Port: The History and Evolution of the Port of Milwaukee
By Leah Dobkin and Tom Barrett
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About this ebook
Leah Dobkin
Leah Dobkin is a freelance writer on environmental, social and consumer issues. Prior to freelance writing, Ms. Dobkin was in the aging and nonprofit field for more than thirty years. She has a master's degree in gerontology and nonprofit management from Columbia University. She lives three blocks from Lake Michigan in Shorewood, Wisconsin. Being a Pisces, she naturally spends a lot of time around water. You can read some of her articles at www.leahdobkin.com.
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Soul of a Port - Leah Dobkin
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PART I
MILWAUKEE’S BEST-KEPT SECRET
GETTING ACQUAINTED
Milwaukee’s best-kept secret is its port. It’s not one of the largest or most famous, but the Port of Milwaukee is distinctive and colorful. Very few know of its inner workings, its characters or its stories. Characters such as a longshoreman who writes poetry, a harbor master who was a magician and a ghost that haunts a tugboat are all common at a very uncommon port.
The story of Milwaukee’s port unfolded unconventionally. Most lakefront cities only developed their inner channels. Milwaukee’s politicians and residents financially supported the development of both the inner and outer harbor. They passed bonds and leveraged federal dollars to dredge, reshape and build a modern port. There was always a strong belief that Milwaukee’s prosperity was tied to the port.
Early on, pragmatic socialist mayors such as Emil Seidel, Daniel Hoan and Frank Zeidler advocated for public ownership and control over the waterfront to ensure that citizens would always be able to access its benefits. They and other Milwaukee leaders—such as William George Bruce, the first chairperson of the Milwaukee Harbor Commission (1920–45)—felt strongly that public administration over harbor traffic was essential for waterborne commerce to develop to its potential. They established a Harbor Commission that other cities used as a model.
The Port of Milwaukee is unique in that it is a public port, owned by the city but run with private-sector sensibilities. The port has always harmoniously blended private and public undertakings in harbor development and commerce. It is more diversified and resilient than most other ports. As society, markets and government regulations changed, the port has demonstrated its flexibility by discovering and securing new types of cargo. It has been able to collect essential market intelligence, stay attuned to shifting nuances in the shipping industry and balance alliances both in domestic and world trade.
Aerial view of Milwaukee Harbor, 2007. Port collection.
By offering both lake and ocean ships, pipelines, barges, two Class I railroads and immediate freeway access, the commercial Port of Milwaukee features more forms of transportation than any other port in the Midwest. It demonstrated intermodal shipping even before intermodal
was a buzzword. Port administration and companies based at the port have offered incentives to its customers, providing top-notch services and competitive prices and commanding unusual mutual respect and trust. The port is a place filled with hardworking, straight-talking people where even competing tenants lend a hand to one another. It is a community like no other.
The Port of Milwaukee is an important but sometimes overlooked resource in our community. It not only represents the seed
of our city, but it was also instrumental in building what we cherish today, and no doubt it will be instrumental in shaping our future. From its early days of fur trading to its new niche in alternative renewable energy, the Port of Milwaukee is evolving by seizing new economic opportunities that not only benefit the port but you and I, as well.
These mammoth wind towers come as sections into the port and then are erected at the job site.
The Port of Milwaukee improves the quality of life in the city and surrounding communities. It is a highly focused regional asset in that many goods we consume or manufacture within ninety miles are transported through the port. Furthermore, it keeps our local economy competitive by reducing the cost of delivering those millions of tons of products that we use or manufacture in the region.
Goods are delivered every day that ultimately end up in or near our homes and businesses. Cement and asphalt are used to construct buildings, driveways, parking lots, shopping centers, tennis and basketball courts and highways like the Marquette Interchange. About one million tons of road salt come through the port each year, which makes our roads safer in the wintertime. The coal that is shipped here heats our homes and businesses, and the shipped steel is used by area manufacturers.
People are also not aware that the Port of Milwaukee, under the jurisdiction of the Board of Harbor Commissioners, includes the land encompassing part of the Art Museum, Discovery World at Pier Wisconsin, the berth for cruise ships, the Harbor House Restaurant, Summerfest and the Lake Express high-speed ferry, which all add to the quality of our lives and increase tourism dollars. Milwaukee could survive without its port, but it wouldn’t be the same. Life would be more expensive, inconvenient and frustrating.
The port is an essential player in enabling the manufacturing of great beer in Wisconsin. Albacor Shipping brought this beer equipment here from Germany. Photograph by Willie Hoffman.
Harley-Davidson motorcycles being loaded for export to Holland at the Municipal Transit Shed 1, August 1956. Milwaukee Journal photo.
The Port of Milwaukee is unique in many ways and most certainly misunderstood. People do not realize the beehive of activity nor how the Port of Milwaukee has adapted to societal changes over the years. It’s not just the 250 ships that come and go each year from more than two dozen countries. There are also 7,000 rail cars and 120,000 trucks that transfer a dizzying array of imports and exports.
Although it is one of the smaller ports in the United States, the Port of Milwaukee is one of the relatively few to make money. The port on average has returned $1.13 million in revenues to the city each year for the past five years. Most people think that its heyday was back in the ’50s and ’60s, but the reality is that the port is doing better in the last seven years than it has in those decades, despite our currently distressed economy. For example, in 2009, a year when Great Lakes international shipping was down 25 percent and most ports saw declines between 15 percent and 30 percent, the Port of Milwaukee’s international tonnage was up 22 percent. Overall tonnage was down less than 1 percent.
The port’s seventy-ton gantry crane runs along the City Heavy Lift Dock, where international containers are imported and exported daily. Port collection.
The Little Tug that Could.
The tug Wisconsin skillfully muscles the twenty-six-thousand-ton Polsteam freighter to its dock. Photograph by David Fasules.
Imports and exports that come through the port every day reflect our society. They show us where we came from and where we are heading. Once, we traded beaver fur; now we are exporting to China scrap metals such as copper, which is in part recycled from electronics the Chinese sold to us.
The port looks industrial and the people who work there, tough and rugged—but take a closer look. There is beauty beyond the muscle and sweat of handling steel coils, barreling trucks and rusty barges. There’s the choreographed pas de deux of man and machine gracefully handling precious cargo. The salt mounds look like terrain from another planet, and the stacked colorful container boxes resemble gigantic toy blocks. And the ships…oh the ships! You can’t help but be amazed at how a small tugboat helps slide an incoming seven-hundred-foot cargo ship into its berth.
NOT YOUR ORDINARY PORT
A CEO of a stevedore company mails a check to a retired longshoreman to help him pay for his utilities. A busy port director runs down from his office to the ferry terminal to translate for a German-speaking couple wanting to buy ferry tickets. Port tenants share equipment and personnel with one another, even competitors. Indeed, this is not your ordinary