There are just 15 houses in the spot on the map known as "Pigsville," but residents say that when the doomed enclave is destroyed next year in a bridge-rebuilding project it will be the end of a close-knit way of life.
The fate of one of Milwaukee's oldest and most stable blue-collar neighborhoods has been sealed by the very bridge that has given it an identity the last 80 years.Pigsville, on the bank of the Menomonee River west of downtown, will be destroyed in 1991 when the mammoth Wisconsin Avenue Bridge whose approach forms one of its borders is rebuilt under a $15.3 million project.
"There's a lot of irony in it. It's a unique, special neighborhood that now will be gone, resigned to the history books," said Alderman Michael Murphy, whose district includes Pigsville.
The 40 or so residents who have lived in the neighborhood - many for decades - will be relocated starting in August.
They'll be leaving behind the asphalt-tile roofs, limestone basements and creaky stairwells of their century-old homes. They'll also leave behind the smell of hops from the huge Miller Brewing Co. brewery across the river, the sounds of crowds cheering at Milwaukee Brewers games at County Stadium a quarter-mile away and the plate-rattling vibrations of Soo Line trains that pass on the western edge of the neighborhood.
But most of all, the residents will miss the camraderie that goes back decades and the privacy of an isolated neighborhood where crime is rare and friends can venture outside in their bathrobes for an early-morning chat.
"Our biggest fear going somewhere else is neighborhoods don't get his close," said Kim Papp, whose family has lived in Pigsville since 1922. "It's a great place to live. We're all going to miss it."
Papp, 30, her husband, William, a plumber, and two daughters live next door to the two-story house where her hsuband's father, grandmother and grandmother's sister-in-law still live.
"Our daughters are the fifth generation to live down here. There's a lot of history. Bill's great-grandfather helped build the Wisdconsin Avenue viaduct."
That viaduct, the main bridge for the main drag leading toward downtown, was completed in 1911, boasting concrete arches that resemble a Roman aqueduct. The bridge is the main symbol for Pigsville, but it is suffering from long-term deterioration and must be replaced. And the replacement project will mean the leveling of the clutch of houses at its base.
The river, the railroad tracks and the approach to a smaller bridger to the south form the other boundaries of Pigsville. There's only one road leading in.
"Unless you know where you're going, it's hard to find," said resident Sue Wiederstein. "There's only one way in and one way out. It's like a little city suburb. There's no sidewalks. We don't have driveways or garages. We don't have problems."
How the area got its name, which dates back to before the turn of the century, is a mystery. One story attributes the moniker to a man who kept pigs, while another holds that the area was named after a dentist named Dr. Pigg. Yet another says it was named for iron castings - poured from a smelting furnace at a nearby foundry.
While residents throughout the valley often stake claim as members of Pigsville, most agree the 15-home neighborhood of bungalows and cottages at the base of the viaduct is the original Pigsville. Early residents were German immigrants, later supplanted by Slavs.
Pigsville has had its share of excitement. Occasionally, the Menomonee is known to rise above its banks with spring rains, sending water through the streets.
Roughly once every 10 years, one of the passing Soo Line trains has derailed, sounding a bone-shaking clamor. At least three times, despondent people jumped to their deaths from one of the bridges above.
But perhaps the single biggest event was in the early 1980s when neighborhood residents joined together to force the closing of a popular tavern called Fourth Base because patrons sometimes plucked flowers from neatly kept gardens or urinated in the road.
The final chapter is at hand. The bridge project is slated to begin in 1991 with demolition of the homes and bridge. The new bridge, which will preserve the original architectural design, will probably take two years to complete.