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PHILIPPI ART SOUVENIR
OF
LA CROSSE, WISCONSIN
1906
TRADE EDITION
LA CROSSE

PROSPEROUS AND BEAUTIFUL

MEN and nature played equal parts in the
making of La Crosse. Business and beauty
are the chief attributes of the city, stability
and comfort its principal characteristics,
wealth and culture its most notable embellishments.
Men and nature have contributed almost equally to
each and all of these.

Nature supplied the advantageous location. The
river and the broad and fertile acres extending for
hundreds of miles in every direction made possible
the establishment of a great commercial center. Men took
advantage of the opportunity and built upon this solid
foundation a bustling and beautiful city. La Crosse
is the natural market for a large territory; likewise it is


the natural distributing point for the same district. This
is the foundation of its present prosperity and stability.

Nature furnished the river valley, hemmed it in by
grand and rugged bluffs surrounded by rolling hills
and fertile coulees. Comfort-loving men marked this
for an ideal residence spot and built up a city of homes.
They paved the long streets and broad avenues and
lined them on either side with trees. They laid out
parks and drives, taking care not only to preserve, but
to adorn and embellish what nature had provided.
They built beautiful homes, erected substantial business
blocks and reared magnificent public buildings. With
its rivers, parks, bluffs, miles of paved streets and shady
drives and long blocks of comfortable homes surrounded
by rich foliage, La Crosse is the most beautiful city of
the upper Mississippi valley.

La Crosse has a population of 33,000. Its citizenship
is heterogeneous, combining the best and strongest
characteristics of all the nationalities of which it is
composed, those things which make for physical
strength, mental soundness and moral correctness. This
condition has begotten thrift, a fact which is evidenced
by the large percentage of citizens who own their own
homes and by the general stability of the city shown in
its finely paved streets, modern business blocks and
general air of prosperity so evident in the activity in
every line of trade and business.

A large volume would be required to give anything
more than a general idea of the extent of business done
in La Crosse. A history of its transformation from a
sawmill town to a manufacturing city of diversified
industries likewise would require many chapters of
many pages each and embodying a great mass of statistics.
Some general conception of the commercial
and industrial importance of the city may be gained
from a statement of the amount of business carried by
the banks of the city. In the last quarterly statements
of the five principal banks the deposits aggregated
$6,500,000. This amount exceeds by over 50 per
cent the deposits in the banks of any other city in
Wisconsin except Milwaukee. It exceeds the combined
deposits in the banks of Oshkosh and West
Superior, both of which cities have recently claimed to
be the second city in the state.

Likewise La Crosse is a great jobbing and wholesale
center. The five principal railroads passing through
the city furnish an unrivaled outlet and put the
La Crosse distributer in a position to compete successfully
with his brothers in Milwaukee, St. Paul, Minneapolis
and even in Chicago. The lines are varied and
range from drugs and groceries to plumbers' supplies
and house furnishings. The territory immediately
contiguous is strictly a La Crosse field. It is bound to
La Crosse by a hundred bonds of business, and it is
to be still more closely bound by interurban railroads
now building and others that are projected.


Parks are numerous. Not so great in extent as in
some larger cities, for in this the idea of utility has
forced the conception of beauty to give way before its
demands. But here and there throughout the residence
and even in the business portions of the city are plots
of ground which have been set aside as fitting places
in which the reign of nature, guided by the taste of
man, shall take precedence. Other plots are to be
found, however, greater in extent, but all the more
beautiful for the greater display of taste and judgment
which they have afforded. Myrick Park, the inland
resting place of those who would withdraw "from the
madding crowd's ignoble strife," is a scene both of
natural and artificial beauties of vegetation, and it is a
spot of which one of the greatest of American landscape
gardeners, John Thorpe, has said: "Its possibilities
are well-nigh limitless, and its adaptation has
been in no wise injured by the work of man."
Pettibone Park, "the island," as it invariably is called
by newcomers to the city, is in some respects more
attractive to visitors than its inland rival, for it is from
the cool recesses of its shaded nooks that one is given
a glimpse of the Mississippi, moving in majesty to the
Gulf. Here, if anywhere, is the place where residents
of La Crosse and those who are so fortunate as to be
guests within the city's gates love to while away the
quiet hours of a summer afternoon. But the work has
not stopped with these two places of quiet enjoyment.
Other plots along the rivers are already set apart for
similar purposes, and the work on both new and old
is still in progress.

But a mention of the beautiful features of La Crosse
is worse than incomplete unless attention is given to
the beautiful drives with which the city is surrounded.
Shady nooks in the coulees, beautiful lanes on the
slopes of the hills and bluffs, views of indescribable
beauty, changing with every variation of the sun's
light, all enter into the list of features which remain
long in the mind of the visitor, and are a constant
source of pleasure and satisfaction to those who are so
fortunate as to have their homes in this most favored
spot. Chief of these is grand old "Grandad Bluff, "
from whose bald crest the gaze is permitted to stretch
for miles both up and down the bluff-lined shores of
the Mississippi, and back into the country beyond the
hills, where the fields are seen in the varied hues of
the changing seasons.

The sportsman in search of hunting or fishing can
find them near La Crosse. The river and the nearby
lakes furnish the greatest variety of fish, and the river
bottoms abound in water-fowl which make of it the
hunter's paradise.

Business and beauty, stability and comfort, wealth
and culture are the distinguishing features of La Crosse,
at once the most prosperous and the most beautiful
city in the upper Mississippi river valley.


La Crosse offers greater inducements to commercial
institutions seeking new locations than any other city
in the northwest. There is an abundance of the finest
sites for factories; sites left vacant during the past few
years by the removal of the great lumber mills. These
sites are ideal in every respect and can be secured at
reasonable figures.

La Crosse has the finest of transportation facilities
and organizations of business men which have large influence
with the transportation companies in the matter
of rate making, etc. Five roads run into La Crosse:
Chicago, Milwaukee & St. Paul; Chicago & Northwestern;
Chicago, Burlington & Quincy; Green Bay &
Western; La Crosse & Southeastern. And a new
interurban line is to be built from La Crosse to Black
River Falls. La Crosse is on the banks of the great
Mississippi river which now offers unlimited transportation
facilities, with regular packet service, and which,
in the not far-distant future promises to become the
greatest transportation highway in the country.

La Crosse offers more to the manufacturer looking
for a good location than any other city in the state.
Taxes are moderate and the people are right. Manufacturers,
who have sought locations, and in seeking
visited many of the best cities in the northwest, have
invariably selected La Crosse and for the reason of its
unlimited facilities La Crosse has secured in the last
half dozen years a score of new and great manufacturing
industries, employing in the aggregate, thousands
of men. La Crosse is a live, hustling city and a
legitimate industry has never failed within its borders,
but all have, on the other hand, prospered with the
cordial help and support given them by local industrial
powers.


Grandad Bluff - East End of Main Street

Main Street - West from Fourth Street

Main Street - East from Fourth Street

Riverfront - North of Wagon Bridge - Taken from Pettibone Park, Opposite Foot of Main Street

City Hall Building
U.S. Government Building

Oak Grove Cemetery

J.M. Hixon Residence
John Paul Residence
Charles Michel Residence
W.S. Cargill Residence

The Mississippi - Looking South from Junction of South Front and Seventh Streets

Front Street - North from Main Street

Front Street - South from Main Street

Old Court House Building
New Court House Building
La Crosse Public Library Building

La Crosse River - Taken from the North Side Bridge

First German M.E. Church
First Congregational Church
Christ Church (Episcopal)
First Church (M.E.)

In 100 Block South Fifteenth Street

Third Street - South from Jay Street

Myrick Park (Formerly Lake Park)

Y.M.C.A. Building
County Jail Building
High School Building
Masonic Temple Building

Lagoon, Pettibone Park

Birdseye View of La Crosse (South Side) - Taken from Grandad Bluff - Looking West

View From Courthouse - Looking Northwest

Lake Como - Eight Miles West of City - Looking South from the Falls

Second Street - South from State Street

Rice Lake - The Home of the Mallard - Three Miles North of City

Washburn Monument
East Drive Pettibone Park
Losey Memorial
Forest Avenue

Ebner's Coulee - Taken from Grandad Bluff

La Crosse Lutheran Hospital
La Crosse Hospital
St. Francis Hospital

River - South of Wagon Bridge

Catholic Churches
Holy Trinity Church
St. James' Church
St. Joseph's Cathedral
St. Mary's Church

A Mississippi River View Opposite Ferndale

In 1500 Block Madison Street

On the Mississippi - Str. Carson and Bow Boat, with Lumber Raft in Tow - Taken from Wagon Bridge, Looking North

King Street - East from Eighth Street

A Mississippi River Bottom Pasture

Birdseye View of the Mississippi - Taken from Bald Eagle Bluff, Four Miles North of City - Looking East and South - La Crosse in Distance

Third Street - North from Main Street

Third Street - South from Main Street

A River Packet at the Wharf
West Drive Pettibone Park
Pavilion Pettibone Park
The Wagon Bridge

Scenes at Oehler's - Four Miles South of City
Cave, Mill Pond, Mill, Mill Dam

Cass Street - West from West Avenue South

Lower Driveway Oak Grove Cemetery

Bishop Schwebach's Residence
Convent of St. Rose
Convent of St. Rose Chapel

French Lake - Two Miles North of City

Pearl Street - West from Third Street

Pearl Street - East from Third Street

In 1400 Black State Street
In 1300 Block Main Street
In 400 Block South Fourteenth Street
In 400 Block South Fourteenth Street

Country Scene - Three Miles North of City, On Road to West Salem

M. Funk Residence
W.W. Withee Residence
W.W. Cargill Residence
J.J. Hogan Residence

West Avenue - South from King Street
In 100 Block South Fourteenth Street
In 100 Block South Thirteenth Street
In 1400 Block Cass Street

P. & W. Cigar Co. Building
Batavian National Bank
National Bank of La Crosse
Jos. B. Funke Co. Building

View of the John Gund Brewery Co's Plant

Drive to Medary - East End of City Limits
Como Falls - Eight Miles West of City

Lake Como - Eight Miles West of City - Taken from Steve's Idlewild

View Taken from Funke Building, Corner Front and State Streets - Showing Conjunction of the Mississippi and Black Rivers
The Foreground in this view, Extending North to Elevator, is Being Filled in for the Purpose of River Front Park
Arrow - The Mississippi River
Dagger - The Black River
P - Pettibone Park
X - Where La Crosse River Empties into Black River

Fourth Street - South from U.S. Government Building

Fourth Street - North from Jay Street

Hotel Stoddard Building
Park Store Building
McMillan Building
Linker Building

On the West Bank of the Mississippi - Looking North Towards Bald Eagle Bluff

L.F. Easton Residence
F.P. Hixon Residence
S. Gantert Residence
Mrs. Jessie M. Holway Residence

Bostwick Valley - Looking North from St. Joseph Ridge

Schaghticoke Country Club Golf Grounds - Taken from Club House Looking East
View of Driveway, Grandad's Face, Club House and Cliff on Grandad Bluff

Mrs. Elsie Scott Residence
Levi Withee Residence
I. Schilling Residence
Wm. Doerflinger Residence
W.A. Sutor Residence

On the Mississippi - Str. Glenmont and Bow Boat, with Log Raft in Tow - Taken from Wagon Bridge - Looking South

Mrs. H. Berger Residence
A. Platz Residence
J.D. Young Residence
H.A. Salzer Residence
B.E. Edwards Residence