{"id":28283,"date":"2025-08-03T00:01:32","date_gmt":"2025-08-03T07:01:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/?p=28283"},"modified":"2025-07-22T11:59:54","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T18:59:54","slug":"milwaukees-pabst-mansion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/exhaustnotes.us\/blog\/index.php\/2025\/08\/03\/milwaukees-pabst-mansion\/","title":{"rendered":"Milwaukee’s Pabst Mansion"},"content":{"rendered":"
By Joe Berk<\/h6>\n

Last year, Susie and I took a trip to Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan.\u00a0 It was fun.\u00a0 We met with my former battery commander (with whom I served in Korea), we went to the Harley Museum in Milwaukee, we visited Green Bay and their fabulous Auto Museum, we stopped in at the Green Bay Rail Museum, we rode up to the Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, we toured the Miller Brewery, and we hit a few other places (I’ll provide links for all these at the end of this blog).\u00a0 We do trips like this to have fun and as ExNotes and Motorcycle Classics<\/em> content safaris.\u00a0 It’s fun.\u00a0 I like to travel, I like to write, and I like taking pictures.\u00a0 Yep, life is good, and what we do sure beats working for a living.<\/p>\n

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Susie is super good at finding places (usually ones I’d never heard of) wherever we wander, and one of them was the Pabst Mansion in Milwaukee.\u00a0 This is an interesting story.\u00a0 You probably know from the Miller Brewery blog we wrote last year that Milwaukee is America’s beer capital.\u00a0 One of the early beer companies in America was Pabst.\u00a0 The story goes like this:\u00a0 Frederick Pabst came to this country from Germany as a 12-year-old boy (with his family) in 1848.\u00a0 He started his working life as a cabin boy on the ships plying Lake Michigan and eventually worked his way up to captain.\u00a0 \u00a0He married Maria Best in 1857, which brought him into the beer business.\u00a0 Maria’s father owned Best and Company, which at the time was the largest beer company in the country.\u00a0 \u00a0The Captain (as Frederick Pabst was known by that time) joined the beer biz in 1864, and through hard work (and an obviously smart choice in the matrimonial department) he soon became the top dog.\u00a0 The Captain changed the company’s name to the Pabst Brewing Company in 1874.<\/p>\n

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The Captain commissioned construction of the Pabst Mansion in 1890.\u00a0 It took a couple of years to build, but I think the wait was worth it.\u00a0 This place is as grand as anything I’ve seen anywhere in the world.\u00a0 Apparently, I’m not the only who felt that way; in 1908 the Catholic church’s Archdiocese of Milwaukee purchased the place.\u00a0 \u00a0Over the next seven decades, five Archbishops and more than a few priests and nuns lived there, too.\u00a0 \u00a0By 1975, the Archdiocese wanted out, and sold the property to Wisconsin Heritage, and outfit that offers tours and sells tickets.\u00a0 \u00a0That’s a good thing; the Pabst Mansion (prior to the sale) was going to be demolished and turned into a parking lot.\u00a0 Just prior to the sale to Wisconsin Heritage, the Pabst Mansion was added to the National Register of Historic Places.<\/p>\n

Once inside the mansion, we were blown away by its ornateness, the beautiful wood paneling, and the sheer luxuriousness of it.\u00a0 As we went through the different rooms, I wondered what it must have been like for the Captain, and then all those archbishops, priests, and nuns to live here.\u00a0 It must have been grand.<\/p>\n

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Living there must have been grand.\u00a0 We had a fun time at the Pabst Mansion.\u00a0 If you ever find yourself in Milwaukee, the Pabst Mansion is worth a stop.<\/p>\n

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The other blogs and magazine articles I mentioned that resulted from our visits to Georgia, Wisconsin, and Michigan?\u00a0 Here they are:<\/p>\n

Omer McCants (my battery commander in Korea)<\/a>
\nThe Harley Museum<\/a>
\nThe Harley Museum article<\/a>
\nGreen Bay and the Automobile Gallery article<\/a>
\nGreen Bay National Rail Museum<\/a>
\nPictured Rocks National Lakeshore<\/a>
\nMiller Brewery<\/a><\/p>\n

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