Bratwurst, Bier und Kase in Milwaukee

The Old World Third Street Historic District on North Dr Martin Luther King Drive preserves one of Milwaukee's most intact Victorian-era commercial streetscapes, a cohesive run of Italianate, Victorian Gothic and Romanesque storefronts shaped by leading local architects. It survives as the last fragment of Kilbourntown, Milwaukee's original German commercial center, a district that — from the city's founding in the 1830s through World War I — anchored downtown commerce and showcases the enterprises of German-American merchants.

During World War I, Milwaukee's German-American community faced intense suspicion and public pressure. German language instruction disappeared from the city's schools, businesses and families anglicize their names, and street names are altered to avoid persecution. The city's brewing industry, long dominated by German-American entrepreneurs, was damaged by wartime propaganda and Prohibitionist campaigns that portray breweries as wasteful and disloyal. First-generation immigrants were required to register and carry identification cards, and many are barred from entering zones around war-production factories or restricted from certain jobs. Against this backdrop of wartime hysteria and cultural suppression, the Third Street corridor endures as a physical reminder of Milwaukee's German-American community.

The city renamed the street from Old World Third Street between W Wisconsin Avenue and W McKinley Avenue to Dr Martin Luther King Jr Drive on 17 January 2022. In 1984, the city renamed 3rd Street to Dr Martin Luther King Drive from McKinley to Capitol. - AsNotedIn