A name coined by wages
Milwaukee’s Silver City Neighborhood traces moniker to workers’ pay
Where can you find steaming bowls of pho, a state trail in a revitalized river valley, a high school student-led coffee shop and salsa dance classes – all in one place? Head to Silver City, a neighborhood on the southwest side of Milwaukee.
Where is Milwaukee’s Silver City neighborhood?
Many call Milwaukee a “city of neighborhoods” – and the number of neighborhoods and their boundaries can depend on whom you ask.
The Neighborhoods In Milwaukee project, created by nonprofit Urban Anthropology Inc. defines Silver City’s boundaries as: the Hank Aaron Trail near the Menomonee Valley on the north, West Greenfield Avenue to the south, and South 31st and 38th Streets to the east and west, respectively.
VIA Community Development Corporation, a group that’s worked with residents in Silver City and the nearby Layton Park and Burnham Park neighborhoods, defines the community’s boundaries on the east and west as South Layton Boulevard and Miller Park Way, respectively, according to its website.
Indigenous Potawatomi, Menomonie first called now-Silver City home before Europeans came for industrial jobs
Silver City is on the ancestral land of the Potawatomi, Menomonie and other indigenous people. Centuries before Europeans arrived in the late 1800s, they called the land in and around the Menomonee Valley home – as well as created and used a path that’s now known as National Avenue.
The earliest Europeans to settle in Silver City included Germans, Irish, Scandinavians and Romanis, who came for fast-growing industry jobs in railroad, confectionery and manufacturing companies developing in the Menomonee Valley factories.
Area laborers and the silver coins they got as compensation in factories are to thank for the neighborhood’s name today.
“When the workers circulated the silver among the area’s 24 taverns, the name “Silver City” began to appear in Milwaukee newspapers,” according to the Neighborhoods In Milwaukee project.
Silver City was its own village of 2,000 people by 1900, but a series of fires prompted residents to call for more services and the village to join the City of Milwaukee.
Latino residents, especially Mexicans, came to Silver City from the nearby Walker’s Point neighborhood, where they had been settling in since around 1920. More Mexicans, Puerto Ricans and folks from Central American countries came to Silver City in the 1970s.
Silver City was – and remains – a neighborhood with ‘tremendous opportunity’
National Avenue became the main commercial corridor for the Silver City area. Despite hardships of the
Great Depression, commerce was bustling on Silver City’s stretch of National Avenue in 1933 with multiple grocery shops, butchers, pharmacies and a dentist.
The Valley Passage is a defining characteristic of the neighborhood, connecting Silver City to the jobs at the factories, said Adam Carr, a resident and local historian.
“Silver City was built as a blue-collar neighborhood when blue-collar meant middle-class,” Carr said. Those jobs in the Menomonee Valley opened up “tremendous opportunity” for people in Silver City without a high school diploma to own a great home in the neighborhood they worked, Carr said.
Few of today’s jobs in the Valley have the low bar to entry that manufacturing jobs once had, Carr said. Still, he said, opportunity is what continues to organize the neighborhood and Milwaukee’s south side today.
Slightly less than half of Silver City residents live in low-income households as of 2021, according to the Neighborhoods In Milwaukee. Many current residents work as contractors, manufacturers, and professionals, or work in food service or health care.
As of 2021, more than half of Silver City residents were Latino, and nearly half the population speaks Spanish as a first language, according to Neighborhoods In Milwaukee. German, Polish, Hmong and Lao residents also make up the current neighborhood.
Menomonee Valley’s rebirth is a Silver City story
A gem in Silver City’s recent history is the effort to revitalize the Menomonee Valley into an ecological and cultural hub by bringing it a branch of the Urban Ecology Center.
The Urban Ecology Center and Menomonee Valley Partners worked with city and state agencies to create Three Bridges Park, the center’s branch at 3700 W. Pierce St. and an extension of the Hank Aaron State Trail through the valley.
The Menomonee Valley branch opened in 2012, “transforming a vacant tavern into an environmentally focused community center within the Three Bridges Park,” according to the Urban Ecology Center website.
The organization offers hundreds of free and low-cost programs for youth and adults. Take a walk through two miles of trails, launch a canoe or kayak into the river, or enjoy the dozens of community gardens in the park.
What else makes Silver City great? Community-led art, events
Silver City’s stretch of National Avenue has more than food. It’s home to auto repair shops and legal offices, the Salsabrositas salsa dance studio and the Feng Shui Haus gift shop.
It’s also where to find the headquarters of VIA Community Development Corporation, 3524 W. National Ave.
From neighborhood meetings to plant sales to housing resource fairs, VIA hosts programming that brings neighbors together.
Public, community-created artwork is another hallmark of the Layton Boulevard West neighborhoods. In Silver City, you’ll see murals on building walls and garage doors.