The Joseph E. Uihlein Estate on Lake Drive and Its Coach House

Some streets tell Milwaukee's story better than any history book. The 3300 block of North Lake Drive is one of them.

Here, on a bluff above Lake Michigan, a Schlitz heir and a tannery heiress built a home that joined two of Milwaukee's great dynasties. Here, a pair of Uihlein brothers lived face to face across the same street. And here, behind a red brick wall and a gated drive, stands the coach house that served it all. This season, I have the honor of bringing that coach house to market.

Let me take you back to where it began.

The Uihlein story starts with an uncle. In 1849, August Krug opened a small brewery in Milwaukee. His bookkeeper, Joseph Schlitz, took the helm after Krug's death, and when Schlitz was lost at sea in 1875, Krug's nephews, the Uihlein brothers, took control. Under their leadership, Schlitz became the beer that made Milwaukee famous.

The eldest of those brothers was August Uihlein. He returned to Milwaukee in 1867 to keep the brewery's books, and he went on to serve as its secretary and chairman of the board for nearly four decades. He was also a banker, a real estate investor and a horse breeder, a true builder of the city.

August's eldest son, Joseph Edward Uihlein, was born in the family home in Milwaukee on December 23, 1875. He studied at Stanford from 1897 to 1899 and graduated from Cornell in 1901.

Then he came home to the family business. Joseph rose to general manager and vice president of the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company, and he served as president of the Second Ward Savings Bank, the institution Milwaukeeans affectionately called the Brewers' Bank. Joseph Schlitz himself had helped found it decades earlier. Today its landmark building on Pere Marquette Park is home to the Milwaukee County Historical Society.

Joseph lived a long and remarkable life. He passed away in January 1968 at 92, having watched Milwaukee grow from a city of breweries into a modern metropolis.

On November 17, 1904, Joseph married Ilma Vogel, granddaughter of Frederick Vogel of the Pfister and Vogel tannery. Pfister and Vogel grew into one of the largest tanneries in the world.

Beer and leather. Two of the industries that made Milwaukee a world city, joined in one marriage.

Joseph and Ilma raised five children: Louise, Joseph Jr., John, Elizabeth and David. The Milwaukee County Historical Society still holds their family papers, including the diary Ilma kept on her European journey in 1914.

This chapter is personal for me. I have sold the Pfister and Vogel mansion twice in my career. Walking this block feels like visiting old friends.

In the early 1900s, Lake Drive was Milwaukee's newest address of distinction. Well-to-do families were moving north along the bluff, and the city's finest architects were designing homes to match the view.

In 1907, Joseph and Ilma commissioned the Milwaukee firm of Kirchhoff and Rose to design their residence. The architectural historians at SAH Archipedia describe the result as lavish, and it is. The house is a grand red brick English Revival estate set high above the lake.

The home grew with the family. Additions followed in 1914 and again in 1917. Kirchhoff and Rose went on to design the Herman Uihlein mansion in Whitefish Bay a decade later, another Lake Drive landmark built for the same great family.

Joseph and Ilma were surrounded by family.

Directly across the street, at 3319 North Lake Drive, stood the residence of Joseph's brother, Erwin Uihlein, and his wife, Paula. Picture it: two Uihlein brothers, facing each other across Lake Drive, with Lake Michigan glittering behind them.

A short drive south, their cousin Mathilde, daughter of Alfred Uihlein, and her husband, Albert Elser, lived in their own Lake Drive mansion. Elser added a garage there in 1911, an early sign of the motorcar arriving on the bluff.

This was a neighborhood of cousins, siblings and Sunday dinners. A family compound written across one of the most beautiful streets in America.

In the age of horses, a family's carriage was its calling card. The coach house sheltered the horses, carriages and tack on the ground floor. The coachman and his family lived in the rooms above, close enough to answer the bell at a moment's notice.

A coach house also spoke to the neighborhood. One built in the same brick and style as the main house, by the same architects, announced a family of means and taste.

Then the world changed. Around 1910, motorcars rolled onto Lake Drive. Coachmen became chauffeurs. Carriage bays became garages. The rooms upstairs housed drivers, household staff and, in later years, family.

The Uihlein coach house was built around 1914, right at that turning point between the horse and the automobile.

The Wisconsin Historical Society records it as the Joseph E. Uihlein Carriage House, a two story Tudor Revival building by Kirchhoff and Rose. Its red brick walls match the main house. Its gable roof carries copper flashing and copper gutters. Heavy stone sills and lintels frame the windows, and a one story garage wing sits beneath a parapeted gable with a round oxeye window at its center.

That is Gilded Age craftsmanship, built for the centuries.

Today the coach house offers four bedrooms, two and a half baths and 2,923 square feet of living space, tucked behind the estate's gated entry on one of the most storied blocks in Milwaukee.

Coach houses have become some of the most coveted homes on Milwaukee's East Side and North Shore. My buyers love them for:

• Pedigree at an intimate scale. The history and architecture of a great estate, in a home sized for modern life.
• Privacy. Set back within the estate grounds, behind gates and garden walls.
• Master craftsmanship. Designed by the same architects who built the mansions.
• Lock and leave ease. A favorite for families who winter in Naples and summer in Milwaukee.

I have sold 68 Gilded Age mansions in my career, and the coach houses on those estates draw some of the most passionate buyers I meet. They want the story. They want the craftsmanship. They want to live where Milwaukee history happened.

This coach house carries the Uihlein name, the Kirchhoff and Rose pedigree and more than a century of Lake Drive history. Opportunities like this arrive once in a generation.

I would be honored to show it to you. Call me at 414-963-0000 to arrange a private showing.