Momentous markers

Port Washington’s place on the Mississippi Blues Trail was given its due recently when the Port Washington Historical Society erected a historical marker outlining the city’s history with Paramount Records at the northwest corner of the north marina slip.

The marker is one of two recently placed downtown. The other commemorates the Mueller Tannery, which stood on the site of the Harborview Hotel from 1872 until it was destroyed by fire in 1903.

The new signs join a handful of other markers in the downtown, among them ones commemorating the Wisconsin Chair Co. fire, the historic firehouse on Pier and Wisconsin streets, the Civil War draft riots and Leland Stanford’s law office on Main Street.

And at least one more marker is expected soon, this one in Fisherman’s Park to commemorate the city’s commercial fishing families.

It has taken some time to get these new markers placed.  

The blues marker was approved and expected to be unveiled in 2017 — the 100th anniversary of Paramount Records — but it wasn’t until this year that it was erected near the site of the proposed Blues Factory entertainment complex.

The marker is similar to one placed in Grafton in 2008 at the site of the record company’s studio on Falls Road and 12th Avenue.

Port’s marker stands at the northernmost point of the Blues Trail in the Midwest in tribute to Paramount Records, which was founded by the Wisconsin Chair Co. in 1917 to create the records that would prompt people to buy phonograph cabinets produced by the Chair Co. on Port Washington’s lakefront. 

Paramount Records featured some of the country’s greatest blues and gospel singers of the 1920s and ’30s, including Charley Patton, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Blind Blake, Tommy Johnson, Skip James, Son House, Henry Townsend, Ma Rainey and Ida Cox.

The records were made and pressed at the company’s studio in Grafton. 

But with the arrival of the Great Depression, the sales of the records declined significantly. Paramount Records closed its studio in 1932 and the factory shut its doors the following year.

Kris Raymond of the Paramount Music Association told city officials in 2017 that inclusion on the blues trail will bring tourists to the city.

“People from around the world follow the (trail) map,” she said. “They travel the trail. Some people plan their vacations around it.”

The Mueller Tannery was owned and operated by Charles Mueller, who was the city’s mayor from 1890 to 1892 and 1896 to 1903 and also served as a county supervisor and as the county’s fuel administrator during World War I.

Mueller got his start at a tannery in Two Rivers and moved to Port to work in a tannery in 1861 “until a nor’easter blew the building into the lake,” his great-granddaughter told the city. He then worked at a tannery in Sheboygan Falls before returning to Port and buying the Wolf Tannery on the west harbor slip.

The business employed 10 to 20 men, tanned about 20,000 hides and did an annual business of $50,000 to $100,000.