Raze Down, Raise Up

WHAT INSPIRED THIS WORK
So much of the work I do in dance is in and around Milwaukee. I have been a resident since 2003 and have fallen in love with this city. While on an outreach assignment teaching dance in the Milwaukee Public Schools, about 6 years ago, I happened to notice an area the surrounding neighborhood near Brown Street Academy and the Alices Garden. There were blocks and blocks of neighborhood that had rubble and empty grassy lots where there were no houses and no businesses. I became curious about why this area lacked residents and businesses and stumbled upon the history of the Park East-West freeway, its planning, partial execution and eventual abandonment of a construction project that displaced thousands of residents from their homes and divided once thriving communities.

Aerial view of the razed area of the Park West segment looking East toward downtown Milwaukee.

The area I was initially curious about was specifically the Park West segment of the freeway (pictured above). However, it occurred to me through my ever curious search for information, highway infrastructure and urban planning projects are aimed at providing opportunities and access for many outside the city but constructed at the expense of black, brown and urban communities. This story is not unique to Milwaukee but is a similar story found in cities throughout the United States.

Figure from the Wisconsin Department of Transportation records titled Proposed addition of the Park and Lake Freeways (North-South Freeway I-43 to East-West Freeway I-794 in Milwaukee County) to the National System of Interstate and Defense Highways System (Jan. 1976)

Aerial view of the Park East segment of the freeway, built in 1971 demolished in 2002.
This area is McKinley Avenue and spills right into what is now know as the Deer District.
READ MORE ON ITS HISTORY

One of the communities most impacted was that of Bronzeville, a thriving black neighborhood in the 1950’s and 60’s. This area had thriving jazz clubs, black owned businesses and a bustling community of patrons traveling through it prior to the construction of the highway.

This PBS Wiscosin Video and Article and this Urban Milwaukee Article do a really great job detailing the devastation that Bronzeville experienced.

For a complete picture of the interstate and highway movement in the 50’s and after, Here is a complete highway history written in 2026 by journalists for the Journal Sentinel.

This dance piece empathetically imagines the Milwaukee community prior, during and after the construction of the interstate. It imagines and pays tribute to individuals who speak out and fight for their own neighborhoods and neighboring communities.

This work premiered on April 30th 2026 at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee’s production of Springdances 2026: We Also Bloom. View the program