A Visit to the Pabst Mansion

Last day in Milwaukee.

The Wisconsin office bought this fried chicken feast for my last lunch and we all sat and ate it together. That was nice.

I can't get enough pictures of Miller Park. I would like to be inside when they retract that dome.

I had time for one last touristy activity before returning to the airport. I went with..

The Pabst Mansion!

Nearby sign:

Captain Frederick Pabst

(1836-1904)

Of German birth, Pabst became a ship's captain in the 1850s and moved to Milwaukee in the 1860s. He later joined his father-in-law's brewery (founded 1844), which was renamed the Pabst Brewery in 1889. By the 1890s it was the world's largest lager beer brewery, and he was Milwaukee's leading citizen.

The captain's elegant Flemish Renaissance Revival mansion was designed by George Bowmen Ferry and constructed on fashionable Grand Avenue 1890-93. Its pavilion housed the Pabst Brewery exhibit at the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. Between 1908 and 1975 five Catholic archbishops resided here. In 1978 Wisconsin Heritages, Inc. purchased the property.

Pabst also erected the city's first skyscraped (1891-92), rebuilt the Pabst Theater (1895), operated by the Whitefish Bay Resort, headed the Wisconsin National Bank, owned a local hotel and many saloons, a hops farm and street railway in Wauwatosa, and hotels and restaurants elsewhere in the nation.

This is the aforementioned World's Fair pavilion that was later slapped on to the side of their house. The family used it as a summer porch.

Currently it serves as the tour center and gift shop.

I didn't buy anything in there but I was amused while I perused.

The Catholic bishops that lived in the mansion really Jesused up the pavillion. Luckily they didn't do too much damage to the rest of the building.

I liked that this place was owned by a beer baron because there were lots of classy beer references hidden all over the place. This column is wrapped in hops.

A fun fact was that the mansion had electricity but the power plant was owned by the factories and the power went out when they closed for the night. So many of the fixtures were set up to provide both electric and gas lighting.

Pabst clearly stole his facial hair fashion from Adolphus Busch. Sad.

I'm pretty sure that this was cardboard treated to look like a tin ceiling. The wallpaper in this place was hard to understand or believe.

I don't know if it had a purpose or they were just trying to be cool but the tiles in the conservatory didn't have grout and there was sand underneath, which caused them to slightly shift around when walked upon.

I really liked their taste in artwork. A lot of it was depictions of people having a good time.

I may need this painting. Cherubs and the Mystery of Brewing.

The bannisters had giant hops on them.

I guess Pabst Brewery bested and then ate one of its rivals, the Valentin Blatz Brewing Company. They bought a lot of the stuff from an auction at the Blatz mansion and a few pieces of it were on display here.

"I'm from Milwaukee, and I ought to know! It's Draft Brewed Blatz beer, wherever you go." The sailor dude is Bert Lahr, who played the Cowardly Lion in the 1939 The Wizard of Oz.

This was a fun servant call system.

I think the way you know you're rich is when there's a mural on your home safe.

Milwaukee airport did not disappoint in its array of cheese related clothing.