The Knickerbocker on the Lake is a historic hotel opened in 1929, located in the Yankee Hill neighborhood of downtown

Milwaukee, Wisconsin Milwaukee is the List of cities in Wisconsin, most populous city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. Located on the western shore of Lake Michigan, it is the List of United States cities by population, 31st-most populous city in the United States ...

. With It was built as an eight-story residential apartment hotel. In 1988 it was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

Description

The Knickerbocker's neighborhood was called Yankee Hill because many of Milwaukee's early leaders living there in the 1800s were

Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East Division. They are one ...

from

New England New England is a region consisting of six states in the Northeastern United States: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. It is bordered by the state of New York (state), New York to the west and by the ...

. They liked the neighborhood because it was close to the downtown and had nice views along

Lake Michigan Lake Michigan ( ) is one of the five Great Lakes of North America. It is the second-largest of the Great Lakes by volume () and depth () after Lake Superior and the third-largest by surface area (), after Lake Superior and Lake Huron. To the ...

. It was also part of Milwaukee's "Gold Coast". By 1900 many of the prominent Yankees living there had been replaced by prominent German and Irish. After 1900 many of the big old single-family homes were divided into rooming houses, and some were razed to make space for apartment buildings and

residential hotel An apartment hotel or aparthotel (also residential hotel or extended-stay hotel) is a serviced apartment complex that uses a hotel-style booking system. It is similar to renting an apartment, but with no fixed contracts and occupants can "check ...

s. These allowed more middle and upper-class people to live at a prestigious address close to downtown without the cost or trouble of maintaining their own free-standing home. The Astor Hotel was one like this, built in 1916 and expanded in 1925. Very similar, the Knickerbocker was built just up Juneau Avenue in 1929. The Knickerbocker Hotel was designed by architects Rossman & Wierdsma of Milwaukee in late Neo-Classical Revival style, somewhat simplified as fashion shifted toward

Art Deco Art Deco, short for the French (), is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design that first Art Deco in Paris, appeared in Paris in the 1910s just before World War I and flourished in the United States and Europe during the 1920 ...

and more modern styles. The building was generally U-shaped, eight stories tall. The exterior is reddish brick decorated with

terra cotta Terracotta, also known as terra cotta or terra-cotta (; ; ), is a clay-based Vitrification#Ceramics, non-vitreous ceramicOED, "Terracotta""Terracotta" MFA Boston, "Cameo" database fired at relatively low temperatures. It is therefore a term used ...

. The first two floors are covered with terra cotta panels. The eighth floor is set off with a terra cotta

cornice In architecture, a cornice (from the Italian ''cornice'' meaning "ledge") is generally any horizontal decorative Moulding (decorative), moulding that crowns a building or furniture element—for example, the cornice over a door or window, ar ...

. The windows on that floor are surrounded by

pilasters In architecture, a pilaster is both a load-bearing section of thickened wall or column integrated into a wall, and a purely decorative element in classical architecture which gives the appearance of a supporting column and articulates an ext ...

and window hoods decorated with wreaths and foliage. Inside, the first floor housed an elegant lobby and retail space. Above that each floor held about 30 apartments. For many years it was owned by the Kaiser family and known as the Kaiser Knickerbocker Hotel. The Knickerbocker on the Lake bills itself a

boutique hotel Boutique hotels are small-capacity Hotel, hotels that provide more personalized service than typical hotels. They typically have fewer than a hundred rooms, and are considered more "trendy" and "intimate", often due to their location in urban ar ...

, with suites decorated in styles varying from

Victorian Victorian or Victorians may refer to: 19th century * Victorian era, British history during Queen Victoria's 19th-century reign ** Victorian architecture ** Victorian house ** Victorian decorative arts ** Victorian fashion ** Victorian literatur ...

to French Country. The majority of the rooms are now owner-occupied. From 1994 to 2011, the hotel housed the Osterio del Mondo, which had been rated a top hotel restaurant by Zagat/USA Today.

References

External links

The Knickerbocker on the Lake official website
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Emporis Buildings listing
} Hotel buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Wisconsin Culture of Milwaukee Hotels in Milwaukee Hotels established in 1929 Hotel buildings completed in 1929 National Register of Historic Places in Milwaukee 1929 establishments in Wisconsin