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City of Milwaukee Archives

City of Milwaukee Archives

The City of Milwaukee Archives contain a variety of materials, including departmental annual reports, consultant reports, and unpublished, one-of-a-kind items...

...such as correspondence, subject files, plat maps, tax records, department journals and ledgers, and board and committee minutes and reports. Milwaukee Public Library continually receives records from the Milwaukee City Records Center and therefore these holdings are in differing stages of organization and preparation; hence, accessibility varies.

Finding aids for some of the Local History Manuscript Collections may be consulted in paper form in the Frank P. Zeidler Humanities Room at the Central Library. Some searching for collections may also be done using CountyCat, particularly to find related materials. Increasingly, finding aids for the City of Milwaukee Archival Collections may be found online by using Archival Resources in Wisconsin which contains the finding aids of archival collections in the Milwaukee Public Library and around the state of Wisconsin.

City of Milwaukee Archives Holdings by Department

The following are some of the City of Milwaukee departments represented in the City of Milwaukee Archival Collections:

City Attorney
City Clerk
City Comptroller
Common Council, including various Aldermanic Papers
Department of Building Inspection – Premises Records
Department of City Development
Department of Public Works
Health Department
Housing Authority
Office of the Mayor, including Frank Zeidler, Carl Zeidler, and John Bohn
 

Using the Collection

City of Milwaukee Archives materials are viewed by appointment only in the Frank P. Zeidler Room of the Central Library. All materials are requested and appointments are scheduled here. Same day access cannot be guaranteed.