kaszub fishing colony spatial study

The Kaszub Fishing Colony on Jones’ Island provides a case study environment to assess the impacts of urban industrialization in Milwaukee in the first half of the 20th century. Though the context for the community was different than the city’s mainland neighborhoods, the Island provides an opportunity to analyze a homogenous ethnic enclave physically separate from the city that functioned as a semiautonomous neighborhood.

Though not immune from industrialization, the Island’s Polish and German communities were impacted by the land use decisions of City leadership and ultimately suffered the displacement of their entire population to other parts of the city. As in the assessment of other city neighborhoods, this analysis of the Island focuses on the community’s demographics, the basic economics of the community, and the socio-cultural components of the Island’s built environment.