Kenosha, Wisconsin
Encyclopedia : K : KE : KEN : Kenosha, Wisconsin
On the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan, Kenosha is the fourth largest city in Wisconsin behind Milwaukee, Madison, and Green Bay. Kenosha is considered to be greater Chicagoland's northernmost suburb at 55 miles distance from the Chicago epicenter; Kenosha is also 35 miles south of Milwaukee [Google Maps]
History
The greater Kenosha area is of high archeological interest since the discovery of pre-Clovis culture settlements in the late 20th century. These prehistoric settlements were around the time of the Wisconsin glaciation.Wasion, David. ["The Mammoth Hunter: David Wasion's Quest for Pre-Clovis People in North America"] The Citizen Scientist, 11 February, 2005 The Paleo Indians, as archaelogists call these peoples, first settled in the area at least 13,500 years ago.Falk, Terrence. ["Bones to Pick"] Milwaukee Magazine, April 2004The Potawatomi originally named the area gnozhé ("place of the Pike"). The first white settlers arrived in the early 1830s from Hannibal and Troy, New York. As more settlers arrived and the first post office was established, the community was first known as Pike in 1836. In the ensuing years the area became an important Great Lakes shipping port, and the village was once again renamed, this time to Southport. ("Southport" is still the name given to a southeast-side neighborhood, park and elementary school as well as several businesses). In 1850, another change brought the growing city (and later Kenosha County) its current title, an Anglicized version of the early name gnozhé[Origin of the name]. Kenoshans often refer to their city as "K-Town" and "Keno" (the latter often adopted over the decades on various local businesses and most notably on Kenosha's historic 1949 Keno Family Outdoor Theatre, Wisconsin's oldest drive-in theatre).[Keno Family Outdoor Theatre website]
Kenosha has four historic districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places, among them the Kenosha Civic Center. ["Our National Register Historic Districts: Preserving Kenosha's Rich Heritage" from the Kenosha Area Convention and Visitors Bureau The art deco Southport Beach House is also listed. [Southport Beach House] profile from the Wisconsin Historical Society
Geography
Kenosha is located at (42.582220, -87.845624)[Geographic references#1GR1].According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 62.1 km² (24.0 mi²). 61.7 km² (23.8 mi²) of it is land and 0.4 km² (0.2 mi²) of it (0.63%) is water.
Kenosha's eastern boundary is Lake Michigan and is bordered by the towns of Somers and Bristol to the north and west respectively and the village of Pleasant Prairie to the south.
Demographics
As of the census[Geographic references#2GR2] of 2000, there were 90,352 people, 34,411 households, and 22,539 families residing in the city.The population density was 1,465.1/km² (3,795.1/mi²). There were 36,004 housing units at an average density of 583.8/km² (1,512.3/mi²). The racial makeup of the city was 83.64% White, 7.68% African American, 0.44% Native American, 0.99% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 4.83% from other races and 2.38% from two or more races. 9.96% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.
There were 34,411 households out of which 34.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them: 47.1% were married couples living together, 13.9% had a female householder with no husband present and 34.5% were non-families. 28.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.3% had someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.54 and the average family size was 3.13.
In the city the population included 27.2% under the age of 18, 10.1% from 18 to 24, 31.5% from 25 to 44, 19.0% from 45 to 64, and 12.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 96.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.2 males.
The median income for a household in the city was $41,902, and the median income for a family was $51,016. Males had a median income of $38,217 versus $26,678 for females. The per capita income for the city was $19,578. 9.5% of the population and 7.0% of families were below the poverty line. Out of the total people living in poverty, 12.9% were under the age of 18 and 7.3% were 65 or older.
Economy
Between 1902 and 1988, Kenosha produced millions of automobiles and trucks under such well-remembered and lesser-known marques and sub-makes as Jeffery, Rambler, Nash, Hudson, LaFayette, Ambassador, Marlin, Pacer, Gremlin, Hornet, Concord, Spirit, Matador, Eagle, Renault Alliance, Renault Encore, Chrysler Fifth Avenue, Plymouth Gran Fury, Dodge Diplomat, Winther, Earl, Petrel, Badger, and True. American Motors had two assembly plants in the city until AMC was merged into what was then the Chrysler Corporation in 1987. An engine plant for DaimlerChrysler remains, but the American Motors lakeshore assembly plant was demolished in 1989 and repatriated into upscale HarborPark. AMC's predecessor in the area, Nash Motors, was formed in Kenosha in 1916 by Charles W. Nash. (A 47-acre west side park and a nearby elementary school are named for him.)Kenosha's employment and residency demographics are mainly white-collar, and tourism is a major contributor to the city's economy which saw a record $211.4 million tourist dollars in 2005, a rise of three percent over 2004 despite flat tourist spending of $11.81 billion statewide.
The city's largest employer is the multi-level educational system. (see #Education)
Kenosha's largest private employer is Abbott Laboratories, which has recently been expanding its local real-estate holdings.
According to the Public Policy Forum, Kenosha's property values rose 8.8% in 2004.Rinard, Amy. ["Property values in area jump 8.9% for 2004"] Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, April 1 2005
Local companies
- DaimlerChrysler (Kenosha Engine Plant)
- G. LeBlanc Corporation
- Jelly Belly (Manufacturing / Warehousing)
- Jockey International, Inc. (World Headquarters)
- Ocean Spray
- Snap-on Tools (World Headquarters)
Law and government
Kenosha has a mayor, considered to be the chief executive, and a city administrator, considered to be the chief operating officer. The mayor is elected every four years. The city's Common Council consists of 17 aldermen from each of Kenosha's 17 districts (each district having two wards), elected for two year terms in even-numbered years.The mayor of Kenosha over four terms since April 1992 is John M. Antaramian; he is the longest serving mayor in the city's history.[John M. Antaramian biographical note, National Brownfield Association]
Transportation
Kenosha has been served by commuter rail service to and from Chicago since May 19, 1855, and the city also has the only Chicago Metra station in Wisconsin, with nine inbound and nine outbound trains each weekday, although not all [Metra Union Pacific North Line] trains conclude and originate in Kenosha; most terminate at Waukegan, Illinois to the south. Plans are underway to extend Regional Transportation Authority passenger service northwards from the Kenosha Metra Station through Racine County and into Milwaukee via the proposed [KRM Line]Kenosha was the first city to color-code transit routes (with the Blue, Green, Red and Orange Lines) and the first city to utilize electric trolley buses in full transit service, both occurring on February 14, 1932.
Kenosha is served by the major expressway Interstate 94 between Chicago and Milwaukee, and also by Amtrak's Hiawatha Line service (via the Sturtevant station in Racine County) between Chicago and Milwaukee, which runs several times daily.
The street system in Kenosha is somewhat unusual; while numbered streets run east-west and numbered avenues run north-south as in many American cities, street numbering commences at Kenosha County's northern border rather than at the city's center. ('Roads' are diagonal thoroughfares, 'courts' are short north-south avenues, and 'places' are short east-west streets.) As such, the downtown area is in the area between 50th and 60th streets. Avenue numbers increase as one heads west from the lakefront. This numbering system continues through all of Kenosha County ending with 408th Ave. (Edmonton, Alberta has a similar numbering system.)
Streetcar line
At the turn of the 21st Century, Kenosha constructed a modern electric streetcar system utilizing historic PCC streetcars in coordination with the HarborPark development on the shores of Lake Michigan. The line has become a model project studied by urban planners worldwide, and is used by thirty percent of visitors to Kenosha.Installation of the rail track sub-base was completed in the fall of 1998, and the streets in HarborPark were completed in the fall of 1999 including the 115-pound continuously welded rail streetcar track over modern concrete ties (except for standard wooden ties under grade crossings). Electric overhead line construction for 600-volt direct current was completed in April 2000 and energized by a modern solid state substation.
Each car is painted in a unique livery representing an historic American transit system that also operated PCC streetcars. The first of Kenosha's five ex-Toronto Transit Commission 'Red Rocket' PCC [A15-class streetcars] was [4610 'Toronto]', delivered on May 4, 2000. The four other cities and systems thereby represented include Chicago Surface Lines 4606 'Green Hornet', Pittsburgh Railways Company 4609 'Pittsburgh', Johnstown Traction Company 4615 'Johnstown', and Cincinnati Street Railways 4616 'Cincinnati'].
The ceremonial dedication of the streetcar line and the new Transit Center was held on June 17 2000, and the memorial ribbon was broken at 11 AM by 4610 'Toronto', piloted by Richard Lindgren who had been a motorman for the original Kenosha Electric Railway (KERy) into 1932.
Scheduled streetcar service started on Monday morning, June 19 2000.
In addition to its utilitarian purpose, the streetcar system (along with Metra service) has played a major role in the downtown's transit-oriented development (TOD) and, co-incidentally, immediately became one of Kenosha's top tourist attractions. In December of 2005, the City Council voted to study expansion of the current two-mile downtown route (which currently carries about 60,000 passengers yearly) to the city's southwest and through the Uptown business district.
Kenosha's HarborPark Plan, which is served by the streetcar line, comprises over four hundred upscale urban housing units and retail, commercial, restaurant and recreational facilities. The streetcar circulator project demonstrates the feasibility of reintroducing zero-emission electric transit into midwest cities and the application of special short-haul transit applications.
Culture
Museums
Completed in 2000, the Kenosha Public Museum is located on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Its main exhibit is a prehistoric Wooly Mammoth skeleton uncovered in western Kenosha in 1992. The bones revealed new clues about ancient American history; cut marks on the bones indicate that the animals were butchered by humans using stone tools. Carbon dating of those bones indicates their age to be 12,500 years old, one thousand years earlier than the previously accepted presence of humans in the Americas. The museum also displays other Ice Age and fine-art exhibits. [Kenosha Public Museum website]Kenosha's Museum of the Civil War, under construction nearby, is scheduled to open in 2008. ["Hearts Touched by Fire: Museum of the Civil War"] Published by the Kenosha Public Museum A dinosaur museum is being prepared within the historic Old Post Office adjoining the streetcar line at Tenth Avenue and 56th Street. Gutsche, Robert Jr. ["As Racine's Heritage Museum faces closure, Kenosha is a museum boomtown"] Journal Times, October 27, 2005.
Music
Band-O-Rama is a concert held annually since the mid-1950s, and features the Kenosha Unified School District's grades 5-through-12 bands totaling about 1,700 students. It typically begins with the National Anthem by grades 7-12; then, each grade plays several selections. At the finale, the massed bands offer John Phillip Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever". (Sousa gave many band concerts in Kenosha.) The KUSD music program has long been a national model, and its student concerts are led by guest conductors of world renown. The Band-O-Rama in particular usually sells over 3000 tickets over the weekend it is offered.
The Kenosha Symphony Orchestra under Maestra Miriam Burns is highly regarded, and concerts are in the acoustically-correct Reuther Central Auditorium in downtown Kenosha.
Since 2002, the outdoor Peanut Butter and Jam Concert Series has been held every Wednesday in August. Approximately three hundred attend each concert at Veteran's Memorial Park. [Peanut Butter & Jam Concerts & Dates]
Lincoln Park Live! concerts began in 2005 on the Lincoln Park lawns near the Warren Taylor Memorial Gardens.
A number of outdoor jazz events are offered throughout the summer months, often at the historic Kemper Center.
The city was until 2005 the international headquarters of the Barbershop Harmony Society, an international fraternal organization of male singers. The organization is now based in Nashville, Tennessee.
Education
Kenosha is home to Carthage College with over 2,000 fulltime students, the University of Wisconsin-Parkside with 5,000 students, mostly commuters, and Gateway Technical College. (The latter two colleges operate their own on-campus radio stations.) Concordia University Wisconsin, Cardinal Stritch College and Marquette University all maintain Kenosha branch campuses.Kenosha is served by the Kenosha Unified School District[Kenosha Unified School District No. 1]. The district has twenty-six public elementary schools, six middle schools and four major high schools: Mary D. Bradford High School, George Nelson Tremper High School, Indian Trail Academy,Lakeview Tech Academy and Reuther Central High School. Kenosha also has a number of faith-based schools and independent academies, including St. Joseph's High School, Armitage Academy, Kenosha Montessori School, Shoreland Lutheran High School, Christian Life School, and LakeView Advanced Technology Center. A number of professional schools are located in the city.
The Kenosha Public Library is part of the Kenosha County Library System, and operates four locations throughout the city. Daniel H. Burnham designed the 1900 Beaux-Arts architectured Gilbert M. Simmons Library, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.[Simmons Library], from the Kenosha Public Library
Media
Kenosha receives radio and television stations from Milwaukee and Chicago. Kenosha is considered a part of the Chicago radio market by Arbitron but a part of the Milwaukee television market by Nielsen. Five radio stations transmit from the Kenosha area: WLIP (1050 AM, ABC Radio Network), WGTD (91.1 FM, fine-arts/public radio/classics/jazz), WIIL (95.1 FM, mainstream rock and roll), WIPZ (101.7 FM, University of Wisconsin - Parkside, and WWDV (96.9 FM, simulcasting WDRV from Chicago) [[Citing sources citation needed]]Regional newspapers include the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Racine's Journal Times, Westosha Report, Kenosha News, Happenings Magazine, Pleasant Prairie Sun, and News Sun.
see also:
- *Milwaukee area television stations
- *Milwaukee area radio stations
- *[Broadcast television in the Milwaukee market]
- *[Broadcast television in the Chicago market]
- *Radio stations of Chicagoland
Sports and recreation
Golf
Kenosha has a number of championship golf courses.[link] Kenosha County golf courses Petrifying Springs Golf Course was named the "No. 1 Sporty Course in Wisconsin"D'Amato, Gary. ["Picking gems from experience"]. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, March 16, 2002 The Washington Park Golf Course was dedicated on February 18, 1922, and its 1937 English-cottage clubhouse is a city landmark.[Washington Park Golf Course] on the City of Kenosha websiteParks
Kenosha is ringed by an emerald necklace of recreational city and county parks, and has eighteen miles of Lake Michigan shoreline frontage, nearly all of which is public. The city has 74 municipal parks, totalling 781.52 acres [City of Kenosha website: Parks Department]Kenosha's Washington Park includes the oldest operating velodrome in the United States (1927) at Washington Bowl. The Kenosha Velodrome Association sponsors American Bike Racing sanctioned races as well as training sessions at the "bowl" throughout the summer. Races are held on Tuesday evenings beginning in mid-May and continuing through August. Free seating is available on the inside of the track, and on important race days food and music is offered.
Kenosha in culture and in trivia
- Films made in Kenosha include The Belle of Kenosha (1923), The Betsy (1978), The Paint Job (1991), Fever Lake (1996), Stricken (1998), The Last Great Ride (1999), the 5 Dark Souls series, and The Smokers (2000). For Keeps? (1988) was set in Kenosha.[IMDB listing] of For Keeps?
- It is believed that the city referenced in Booth Tarkington's 1918 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Magnificent Ambersons was Kenosha and that the Minifer family therein was based upon the family of Orson Welles, with which the author was a personal friend. (It is felt that the character of George Minifer referred to Orson Welles, whose full name was George Orson Welles.)
- Ray Bolger, Gordon MacRae, Bibi Osterwald and Carleton Carpenter sang and danced "In My Kenosha Canoe" through 327 performances of Three To Make Ready on Broadway.
- In Joseph Heller's Catch-22, the chaplain is from Kenosha.
- In Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow the phrase "You never did the Kenosha Kid" (whose meaning is variously altered by different punctuation) is repeatedly present.
- Western author Forbes Parkhill's character "The Kenosha Kid" appeared in the August 1931 issue of Western Rangers magazine.
- The fictional polka band in Home Alone was called the Kenosha Kickers (and its top-selling record was "The Twin Lakes Polka").
- The Kenosha Maroons were a National Football League team in 1924. Of its five games played, it lost four games and tied one. (The franchise today is that of the Washington Redskins.)
- In an episode of The Cosby Show, the family is playing a game where they must name a city starting with a particular letter or the alphabet. When they get to K, Bill says Kenosha.
- Kenosha is also frequently referenced in the sitcom That '70s Show, most notably when the group goes to a disco. Strangely enough though, early promotional material for the show, as well as the show's official Web site placed "Point Place" the fictional city in which That 70s Show is set, near Green Bay, Winsconsin, which would put it on the other side of the state.
- Milton K. Ozaki's hardboiled-detective novels (Wake Up and Scream, City of Sin and others) were set in the fictional city of "Stillwell" but with barely-disguised Kenosha locales and personages.
- The music video for Weezer's song "Buddy Holly," set in Arnold's Drive-In from Happy Days, starts with Al Molinaro introducing the band as "Kenosha, Wisconsin's own." (The band is primarily California-based, and Molinaro made the reference simply to plug his own hometown.)
- The character of Sandy Benson in The Girl Who Came Gift-Wrapped (1974, played by Karen Valentine) is from Kenosha, and speaks the memorable quote: "The whole world's working on a new morality, and in Kenosha they still refer to Ingrid Bergman as 'that woman'."
- "Kenosha Pass" is a landmark in the world of TV show South Park
Notable Kenoshans
Many Kenosha citizens have achieved national and world renown in a variety of fields. On June 7, 1990 a Chicago Tribune feature article ("The Kenosha Connection") marveled at the large number of Kenoshans in the arts and sciences.See: List of Kenoshans
Rankings
Kenosha has received high rankings in several "Best-of" national surveys of American communities in recent year.- In its 2005 survey of United States communities, Money listed Kenosha as 94th on its list of "Best Places to Live".Money, ["Best Places to Live 2005"], accessed May 8, 2006
- The April 1997 Readers Digest ranked Kenosha number two among its list of "Best Places to Raise a Family""The Best Places to Raise a Family" Reader's Digest, April 1997, page 74.
- Worldwide ERC rates Kenosha among the "Best Cities for Relocating Families" in the 500,000 to 250,000 metro population category. Worldwide ERC and Primacy Relocation["Best Cities for Relocating Families"]
- In 2005, the Milken Institute rated Kenosha as the 86th among the largest 200 metro areas in the United States in its "Best Performing Cities" list Milken Institute. ["2005 Best Performing Cities - 200 Largest Metros"]
- In May 2006, Inc. Magazine listed Kenosha at 45 on its "Hottest Midsize Cities" list. Kotkin, Joel and Michael A. Shires. ["Boomtowns '06: Hottest Midsize Cities"]. Inc. Magazine May 2006
Sister cities
Kenosha's four sister cities are:Notes
External links
- [Kenosha.Com]
- [Kenosha Convention and Visitors bureau]
- [Kenosha's historic PCC streetcars]
- [A history of Kenosha's drum and bugle corps.]
| |
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|---|---|
| Surrounding municipalities (over 10,000) | |
| Pleasant Prairie‡ | |
| (less than 10,000) | |
| Somers* | |
| Kenosha County | |
| *town ‡village | |
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