Adam Dillmann on Milwaukee’s “Whiskey Row”

Students of American spirits are well acquainted with Louisville’s “Whiskey Row,” where so many familiar names in whiskey history had their headquarters.  Less well recognized has been Milwaukee’s Whiskey Row along Water Street, overlooking the Milwaukee River, where more than two dozen distillers, liquor dealers, and saloons plied their trade.  Among them was Adam Dillmann, a German immigrant whose entire business career would be located there,

Dillmann was born in Niederbuchen, Nassau, Germany in October 1939 of unknown parentage and emigrated to the United States in 1855 when he was about 16 years old.  The youth came aboard an American owned ship called the Francis Cutting, named for a New York congressman.  The trip, only the ship’s third,  carried European immigrants from Antwerp to New York. The voyage proved to be controversial.  

First, with no explanation of the delay, the ship’s Atlantic crossing took seven weeks when a normal crossing was about four.  Second, some passengers claimed that The journey had been obstructed by whales butting the ship and that twenty passengers had died in transit, their bodies thrown overboard.  The official log showed no whale attacks and only one death.  While the passengers’ story subsequently was doubted, initially it raised a stir — and headlines — in New York.  

By that time Dallmann likely had headed to Milwaukee, a city with a heavily German community  where he may have had relatives.  Although I have been unable to find his photograph, his physical description on a passport application indicates that Dillmann was just under five feet, six inches tall, with “proportionate features” (except for a cleft chin), blue eyes and a “heathy complexion.”  He also appears to have been intelligent and clearly ambitious to succeed in his adopted country.

 

Shown above as it looked about the time of Dillmann’s arrival, the city on Lake Michigan had grown up around two rivers, the Menomonee and the Milwaukee.  Those waterways allowed sheltered areas for loading and unloading cargo and were a bustling economic zone.  Water Street, as it was then designated, was the center of this activity.  Adam Dillmann made it his business home.

The Milwaukee River

The immigrant youth’s first occupation recorded in Milwaukee directories was in 1863 working with Peter Enders, from a prominent local meat packing family.  Dillmann was listed as co-proprietor with Enders of a saloon located at 223  East Water Street.  Over the next decade, Dillmann struck out on his own, running a saloon at 417 East Water Street.   By 1882, the German immigrant had branched out, recorded with a partner named Ignatz Morqawetz in a beer bottling company at 510 13th Street.  

This may have been a short-lived enterprise because within five years  Dillmann was back on Water Street — 242 West Water — as the proprietor of a wholesale wine and liquor store.  Called Adam Dillmann Company, this enterprise would be his sole occupation until the coming of National Prohibition.  It was located successively at four addresses on West Water, each move indicating a need for more space.   One biography also records Dillmann in 1858 buying the Menominee Hotel on West Water Street, shown right.

As a wholesaler Dillmann featured his own proprietary brands of whiskey. They were “Atlas Pure Rye” and “Old Capital Sour Mash.”  As the bottle shown left indicates, Dillmann demonstrated particularly good artistic sense in the design of his labels.  This attention to detail in design carried over to the back-of-the-bar bottles he gifted to his wholesale customers in saloons, restaurants and hotels.  Because of abuses in their use, back bar bottles would be banned after Prohibition.  

Dillmann also was generous with giving away an array of shot glasses to both wholesale and retail customers. The example at left is a particularly attractive shot with an elaborate etched design that advertises Atlas Rye.  Dillmann always was careful to include his name along with the brand being advertised.

As Dillmann’s business flourished along Milwaukee’s Water Street “Whiskey Row,” the busy proprietor was having a personal life.  About 1861 he had married Louisa M. Wellauer, an immigrant from the German area of Switzerland.  In rapid succession the couple would have four children, William, born 1862, Albert 1863.

 

Edward, 1865, and Louise 1867.  Apparently his family status occasioned Dillman’s interest in becoming an American citizen.  Although he applied in November 1860, his certificate of naturalization was not issued until May of 1866 with no explanation of the long delay.  The certificate was  recently offered for public sale on the Internet for $89.95.

As his children matured, Dillmann brought them into his Water Street liquor house.  When Dillmann’s eldest son, William, came of age he was put to work as a clerk.  He would be followed several years later by a younger son, Edward.  As the young men learned the whiskey trade, their father advanced them into management.  William became vice president; Edward, secretary-treasurer.  

When Dillmann entered his seventh decade as a Water Street saloonkeeper and liquor dealer, he made one last move to 124 West Water Street, shown here. His health faltered and he died in 1914, age 75 , with wife Louisa and his sons by his bedside.  Dillmann was buried in a family plot in Forest Home Cemetery on Milwaukee’s South Side.  His monument and gravestone are shown below.

Following the patriarch’s death, William Dillmann became president of the company and Dillmann’s widow, Louisa, vice president.  As National Prohibition became an almost certain reality,  the family decided to shut the doors on their enterprise.  In 1919 “Adam Dillmann Co.” disappeared forever from Milwaukee city directories and Water Street.

With the imposition of the total alcohol ban the following January, the West Water Street “Whiskey Row” emptied out.  Gone were the distilleries, wholesale liquor houses and saloons that once had made the avenue a colorful and vibrant part of Milwaukee’s urban landscape.  Today its whiskey history is just a brief mention in historical tours of the city’s downtown.

Notes:  This post was assembled from a number of sources, including city directories and the U.S. census.  The strange story of the 1855 voyage of the Francis Cutting that brought Adam Dillmann to America is drawn from New York Times stories at the time.