Pabst Mansion

The Pabst Mansion is Milwaukee's most flamboyant Victorian house and a direct expression of the wealth that Pabst Blue Ribbon beer generated in the city's industrial heyday. The Flemish Renaissance design by George Bowman Ferry, completed in 1892, features terracotta trim, ornamental ironwork salvaged from a German castle, and 37 rooms loaded with period furniture, hand-painted textiles and carved woodwork.

Tours of the mansion run daily and last about 45 minutes. The guides are good and give a clear picture of what daily life looked like for Milwaukee's German-American industrial elite at the peak of the city's prosperity. The carriage house and the formal garden have been restored alongside the main house.

The mansion sits on Wisconsin Avenue on the near west side, about 1.5 kilometres from downtown — an easy walk or short bus ride.

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A story
Captain Frederick Pabst commissioned this Flemish Renaissance mansion in 1890 when his Pabst Blue Ribbon brewery was the largest in the world and Milwaukee was the uncontested beer capital of America. Pabst spent $254,000 on the house — about $8 million in today's terms — and filled it with hand-painted leather wall coverings, carved woodwork and ornamental ironwork from a now-demolished castle. After Pabst died the house went to the Catholic Archdiocese of Milwaukee, which used it as a chancery for 70 years before it was purchased and restored as a museum.