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Milwaukee has more than 75 distinct neighborhoods, including the south side’s Jackson Park neighborhood, a mostly residential area with a large namesake park.
Where is the Jackson Park neighborhood?
The neighborhood’s boundaries are Lincoln Avenue on the north, Morgan Avenue on the south, 35th Street on the east and 51st Street on the west.
How did the Jackson Park neighborhood get its name?
The neighborhood gets its name from Jackson Park, the south side’s largest park at 113 acres, which is the most predominant feature of the neighborhood.
The city park commission bought the land that makes up Jackson Park in 1907 from Richard Reynolds, a British military veteran who owned 160 acres along Janesville Plank Road (now Forest Home Avenue) between what is today 35th and 43rd Streets.
Reynolds sold the northern half of his land to the city, which bought it in order to preserve forested space as the city was becoming more developed.
The park was named after President Andrew Jackson.
What are the Jackson Park neighborhood’s most known places?
The Jackson Park neighborhood is mostly residential, with a lot of green space, most notably the 113-acre Jackson Park, the Kinnickinnic River Parkway, the 3.5-acre Manitoba Park and the 72-acre Mount Olivet cemetery.
There are also two churches that were built in the early days of the Jackson Park neighborhood by the predominant ethnic groups that emigrated from the near south side of Milwaukee — people of Polish and German heritage.
Blessed Sacrament, a Catholic parish on S. 40th Street and Oklahoma Avenue, was founded in 1927 by Polish-American people. In 1932, local German Americans built Jackson Park Lutheran Church on S. 49th Street near Oklahoma Avenue.
A statue in Jackson Park is another notable landmark in the neighborhood. “The Spirit of Commerce,” a zinc sculpture originally commissioned for the Milwaukee Grain Exchange and Chamber of Commerce building at Broadway and Michigan, was given to the South Division Civic Association in 1909 and relocated to Jackson Park. Thousands attended the rededication ceremony for the statue, which is a female figure holding a quill and a rudder with a bag of money at her feet, with the inscription, “May this statue ever be a silent witness to the progress and growth of Milwaukee.”
The statue was vandalized in the 1980s, and the hands, quill and plaque were stolen. The neighborhood group, the Jackson Park Community Association, raised money for the restoration of the statue, which was rededicated in 1991.
What makes the Jackson Park neighborhood special?
The neighborhood has a very active community association, which formed among residents in the 1980s to oppose a proposed freeway that would remove the western edge of Jackson Park; the group won their freeway battle in 1983.
The association organizes a number of events, including an annual Halloween event, a 4th of July celebration and a popular summer farmers market.
How to access neighborhood services
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