When the Feds or the police raided one of the taverns, the owners usually got a few minutes warning from sharp-eyed runners on the street. The owners would hustle the customers downstairs to the cellars and on through to the other taverns. They’d quickly stash all the contraband alcoholic drinks and the law would usually find a peaceful and busy, but empty, room. If they checked the cellar, they’d find a boarded up section that was easily removed - if you knew the trick.

Following Glorioso’s we had a several block walk through some of the older residential sections, where Theresa regaled us with stories of some of the founding business fathers, including John Jacob Astor, America’s first millionaire. Astor made his fortune in fur trading, and his empire in the US stretched from New York to the Great Lakes. We were walking along a street named in his honor while Theresa told us about the burned-out Irish section, and the fictional home of Laverne and Shirley, from the Happy Days era. The city will soon be unveiling a statue of The Fonz, too.

Our final stop in the Italian neighborhood was Buca di Beppo, one of Milwaukee’s more renowned Italian restaurants, where we had a quick break in the air-conditioning while Theresa took us throughout the interior, as we sipped our wines. In addition to being a fine restaurant, Buca could also pass as a photography gallery, since the walls are covered almost top to bottom with photos of many of the famous and not-so-famous who’ve graced their tables. Appropriately, in the restrooms, the walls are covered with nudes and nearly nudes of all eras, from Classical Rome to more recent shots of “mooners.”

Theresa also told us about the boon in condo development, with more than 3,000 new condos being built in the past several years, ranging in price all the way to million-dollar residences. She threw out facts about the enormous amount of office space used today in areas previously known for its tanneries and breweries, as well as businesses associated with Milwaukee’s other two main industries in the late 1800s, grain and meat packing.

She told us about the Blatz Brewery, the first in the nation to sell their brew nationally, whose buildings are now owned by the Milwaukee School of Engineering, one the many prominent learning institutions in the city. Pabst was originally called Best Beer, and it got the Blue Ribbon moniker during the 1876 World’s Fair in Philadelphia, when a blue ribbon was tied around the bottleneck of the winning brew.

More recently, Milwaukee is home to eight of the companies on the Fortune 500, and in its beginnings, the city’s name was taken from a Native phrase meaning “a gathering place by the waters,” since it sits at the confluence of three rivers. The entire area was mostly swampland, and several of the buildings we sighted are still resting on cedar pilings, elevating them from the waters. One building is sited on 6,000 cedar pilings and sits atop Lake Emily, and a part of the building’s maintenance includes a daily check of the pilings. If the pilings were to dry out, the building would be in danger of toppling.