Studies in the South and West, with Comments on CanadaWarner, Charles Dudley
History
Studies in the South and West, with Comments on Canada
Warner, Charles Dudley
Canada -- Description and travel; United States -- Description and travel
is, it gives a sort of foreign distinction to the open place which the
city has wisely left for public use. In this part of the town is the
house of the Milwaukee Club, a good building, one of the most
tasteful internally, and one of the best appointed, best arranged, and
comfortable club-houses In the country. Near this is the new Art Museum
(also the gift of a private citizen), a building greatly to be commended
for its excellent proportions, simplicity, and chasteness of style, and
adaptability to its purpose. It is a style that will last, to please
the eye, and be more and more appreciated as the taste of the community
becomes more and more refined.
In this quarter are many of the churches, of the average sort, but
none calling for special mention except St. Paul’s, which is noble in
proportions and rich in color, and contains several notable windows of
stained glass, one of them occupying the entire end of one transept, the
largest, I believe, in the country. It is a copy of Doré’. painting of
Christ on the way to the Crucifixion, an illuminated street scene, with
superb architecture of marble and porphyry, and crowded with hundreds
of figures in colors of Oriental splendor. The colors are rich and
harmonious, but it is very brilliant, flashing in the sunlight with
magnificent effect, and I am not sure but it would attract the humble
sinners of Milwaukee from a contemplation of their little faults which
they go to church to confess.
The city does not neglect education, as the many thriving public
schools testify. It has a public circulating library of 42,000 volumes,
sustained at an expense of $22,000 a year by a tax; is free, and well
patronized. There are good private collections of books also, one that
I saw large and worthy to be called a library, especially strong in
classic English literature.
Perhaps the greatest industry of the city, certainly the most
conspicuous, is brewing. I do not say that the city is in the hands of
the brewers, but with their vast establishments they wield great power.
One of them, about the largest in the country, and said to equal in its
capacity any in Europe, has in one group seven enormous buildings, and
is impressive by its extent and orderly management, as well as by the
rivers of amber fluid which it pours out for this thirsty country.
Milwaukee, with its large German element—two-thirds of the population,
most of whom are freethinkers—has no Sunday except in a holiday
sense; the theatres are all open, and the pleasure-gardens, which are
extensive, are crowded with merrymakers in the season. It is, in short,
the Continental fashion, and while the churches and church-goers are
like churches and church-goers everywhere, there is an air of general
Continental freedom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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