The Interstate highway system in Milwaukee cuts the city into pieces, separating people and neighborhoods with an artificial river of concrete just as the natural Milwaukee, Menomonee, and Kinnickinnic Rivers have for centuries. But while plenty can be said about the effect this physical separation has on our block-level communities (and little pink churches), there’s at least one historic Milwaukee neighborhood that took a harder toll than others.
Tory Hill wasn’t separated from its neighbors by a freeway: it was literally destroyed by it.
All photos by Joe Powell for The Squeaky Curd.
Hundreds of thousands of cars pass through the Marquette Interchange in downtown Milwaukee each day, without ever knowing they’re driving suspended above the remains of a boisterous Irish community. Just like the original Third Ward before it, Milwaukee seemed to be starting a trend in destroying Irish neighborhoods when they paved over Tory Hill in the 1960s with the creation of the Central Interchange.
Roughly bounded by 6th St, Michigan Ave, 16th St, and St Paul Ave (with offshoots), Tory Hill was situated on a literal hill. Just beyond the peak of the hill, Grand Avenue sat with its stately mansions and industrious WASP wealth. That wealth did not extend down the hill, and the working class Irish Catholic homes got progressively grungier as you rolled towards the Menomonee River Valley and the sooty train yards.
The “Tory” portion of the name was a derogatory term used by Englishmen from the Irish word “toraidhe”, translated to robber. And true, Tory Hill was a rough neighborhood by all accounts, counting a young famous Hollywood actor Pat O’Brien and future Wisconsin state senator Irving Mehigan among the members of a local gang. But the devout Catholic enclave spurred the construction of the now-iconic Gesu Chuch at the peak of their hilled home, whose Jesuit founders had started Marquette University (then, College) the decade prior.
That growing college, and the burgeoning post-WWII city it resided in, slowly expanded into the neighborhood. At one time, Hibernia Street (Latin for “Ireland”) was 92% Irish; according to John Gurda‘s book Milwaukee: City of Neighborhoods, it transitioned into cheap housing for Croatians and Hungarians, followed eventually by Latinos and African Americans. The Irish hearts of Milwaukee slowly moved west and north.
When the Interstate construction boom of the mid-20th century took hold, Tory Hill (and the former homes of professional baseball teams Borchert Field and Eclipse Park) was a not-so-mourned casualty. Today, the only tangible vestiges of the neighborhood are the 4-block stretch of road between Michigan and Clybourn Streets, aptly named Tory Hill St, and a visible incline from St Paul Ave up to towering Gesu. Oh, and the Tory Hill Cafe on Marquette’s campus.
For a century, the uninhabitable Marquette Interchange was once a barely-habitable, but lively Irish enclave in a city of German, English, and Italian settlers. Though they say “everyone is Irish on St Paddy’s Day”, in Milwaukee we should say “everyone is Irish while driving through the Marquette Interchange”. It’s not as catchy, I’ll admit, but serves as a nod to a forever-buried Milwaukee neighborhood, Tory Hill.