Riverwest and the American Dream

The following letter was received by email.

Dear Sonya,

I am writing to congratulate you on your great work with the Riverwest Currents and your first home purchase. I am one of the early members and past president of ESHAC. The Currents and your home purchase continue to fulfill the early dream of ESHAC members in 1973: Riverwest as home to all of God’s children.

When I paid $60,000 for a lovely English cottage on N. Gordon Place in 1977, many of my family and friends thought I was crazy to spend so much for a house in “the ghetto.” A month after I bought my house the Journal ran a front page spread on “deteriorating neighborhoods” in Milwaukee, colored in red, with Riverwest lumped in. Jeff Eagan, ESHAC’s executive director at the time, Carol Brill, Verdel De Yarmen, and others mobilized Riverwest and forced the Milwaukee Department of City Development to change Riverwest’s designation from deteriorating to “improving.” The “Journal” then ran a story on the victory with Riverwest given a special “blue” designation, “improving.”

Your home purchase and the quality of Riverwest Currents is testimony to the accuracy of our expectations for Riverwest back in 1973. We thought Riverwest was destined to become one of the most significant examples of integrated city living in Wisconsin (which it now surely is). It would be great if your newspaper were able to jog the memories of some of the participants in Riverwest’s great story, from “deteriorating” to “improving” to “great!” You and the fine citizens of Riverwest are living the renewal of great American cities. If you have not already checked out a classic critique of city planners, Jane Jacobs’ The Death and Life of Great American Cities, I urge you to do so.

Riverwest is a great story. The people of Riverwest are making the kind of history Martin Luther King dreamed of, a community where people are judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” Riverwest, not Fox Point or River Hills, is what the American Dream is all about.

Clear sailing,

James J Godsil

Editor’s note: Regarding neighborhood history: Tom Tolan is revising his History of Riverwest for publication next year. Starting in January, the Riverwest Currents will run a series of six installments, one excerpt from each chapter of the book. The book is being edited by Milwaukee historian John Gurda and will be available for purchase by next year’s Locust Street Festival.

Riverwest Currents - Volume 1 - Issue 10 - November 2002