More About Housing Projects in the Johnson's Park Area

Many houses in the area were simply revitalized by doing some painting and fixing a few things around the house. Others had to be completely demolished to make way for new and better housing. Here are some pictures of 2 houses that were demolished.



This is a picture of an abandoned home before it was demolished.
These area a few pictures of the kind of homes that are being built in the Lindsay heights area. They are very nice and affordable for the people who live in the area.



Most of these homes were built with the help of WHEDA who worked with other organizations in the area such as Walnut Way Conservation Corps, JPNA, the CDC, and the YMCA. these organizations did most of the hands on work in the Lindsay Heights Neighborhood. North Shore bank also helped in the financial area with the houses.

a brief history of Johnso's Park and the Lindsay heights area

Lindsay Heights was named after Bernice Lindsay the “Mother of the Black community.” Bernice Lindsay was an early African American rights activist in the Milwaukee area. The area is on the south side of Milwaukee between west Center, Walnut Way, N 20th and Hwy 43. The area started as a working class neighborhood but changed when many homes were demolished to make way for the freeways. Many of the prospective freeways were never built in the area leaving behind many empty lots. After the 60’s many residents and businesses in the area began to move out; the neighborhood began to deteriorate and succumb to drugs and crime.
In 1997 WHEDA (Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority) started the Lindsay Heights Initiative, which set a goal to make 60 new houses in the area. They sold the empty lots left by the unfinished freeways to people looking to move into the area. The lots were sold for $1 and the residents of the area were also eligible for mortgage help and tax breaks. By 2007 WHEDA had put 9 million dollars into the area and more than doubled their goal of creating 60 houses. They built 165 new houses and rehabilitated another 221. In 2008 the mortgages in the area are now market driven and the WHEDA is no longer treating the area as a special project area.
The success of this project caught the attention of the Zilber Family Foundation. Mr. Zilber grew up in the area as a kid and now wants to help in its revitalization. He plans on giving over $1 million to the area allowing the residents to decide what to do with the money, he believes in a bottom up program that allows residents to put the money toward what they feel needs it most. Despite all of the rebuilding in the area not all is perfect. According to U.S. census data 48% of the areas residents are below the poverty level, 25% are unemployed, 45% have never earned a High School degree, and less than 5% of the residents in the Lindsay Heights area have a college degree.

Amarath Bakery/Muneer Bahauddeen

On April 28th I went to the Amaranth Bakery to do serve hours. I got there at around four an hour early for the class because I took the bus and didn’t know how long that would take. I talked to the owner of the bakery for a while before the meeting started. He has been living in the neighborhood for 12 years and told me a little about the history of the area. When he first moved there it was a predominantly African American community and still is. He told me it was 70% African American, 15% Asian American, 10% German speaking, and 5% white. He talked about how when he moved there it was common for the German population there to never have to speak a word of English. When the class started at 6:00 we first went out to the Amaranth Community garden, which is a small garden in the back of the Amaranth Bakery. At the garden people in the community can help plant vegetables and then harvest them later. We worked in the garden moving railroad tiers to portion off sections of the garden and create a small path. After helping there we went back into the bakery and got soup. Then we went across the street to Muneer Bahauddeen’s studio. Muneer is a professional ceramics artist. He has made installations for several parks in Milwaukee and a hospital. Muneer works with clay pressing it out into tiles, which he then designs. His real passion is to help out his community. He works in the schools system and has done artist in residencies at the Saint Charles center, working mainly with troubles teens. He has residencies their 3 times and has the kids make tile murals based on Traditional African symbols. Right now Muneer is in the process of creating a proposal to submit to Alice’s garden. He would like to create an arch and different posts with tiles marking off different family plots in the garden

Here are a few links to websites about Muneer Bahauddeen
http://aavad.com/artistbibliog.cfm?id=1091
http://www.artsatlargeinc.org/muneer.html
http://unifiedmilwaukee2.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/make-milwaukee-muneer-bahauddeen/

JPNA Photoessay Artist Statement

JPNA Artist statement

I went to the JP area and used a Vivitar mini digital camera purchased at Walgreens pharmacy. The camera worked well enough for its purpose although I would have preferred something with a little better resolution. I used Photoshop to fix some of the problems with the images I took but Photoshop can only do so much. Overall I think the pictures turned out well compositionally but the pictures were not as good as I wanted for quality. I used Microsoft PowerPoint to make the photo essay. That was very easy because I have used it a lot over the years.
I learned a lot about the camera as an instrument. I have always been interested in photography and the idea of capturing a moment of time in an image. This made the photo essay very fun and interesting for me. I experimented with the new camera I bought and got some interesting images out of it. The buildings in the area were interesting to photograph. Some were run down old and abandoned other building like a school that I saw that was pretty new and well kept. I also got to use Photoshop to fix several of my images, which is something I like to do.
I enjoyed my trip to the Johnsonville Park it was interesting to see the place that I had heard so much about from others. Although there weren’t many people walking around the neighborhood I got a good view of the area and what it looks like. I was surprised to see that there was no grocery store in the area.

photos of Johnsons Park Nieghborhood

Brown Street Academy

School bus


Some of the houses in the JP area are run down and abandoned.


The community is working to make their neighborhood a better place to live.


In the JP area there are different forms of housing. The neighborhood mainly consists of homes, new and old. there are also a few apartment buildings and rentable properties.


Alice's Garden offers the community a place to come together. residents can purchase plots, or in some cases get them for free. they are aloud to plant anything in these plots and are given training and advice in vegetable and fruit gardening.

blog #5

For my final project I plan on doing a history of the Lindsey heights neighborhood and the JPNA’s involvement in this area. I may do interviews with residents and would like to try to interview some people that are involved in the JPNA. Another thing that I would like to include in my final project is a picture comparison. I plan on looking through archives of photos of the area and then going to the places that were photographed and take pictures of those places now to compare the two time periods.

media literacy assignment

"Hardbelly's Hogan"
"The Westwater Family"



The Americans

I have chosen two photographs of two different American Families who live in completely contrasting worlds. In the Photograph “The Westwater Family” we are brought into the world of the Westwater family. The picture shows us that the Westwater’s have money; they wear expensive suits, dresses, and jewelry. They are standing in a circle engaged in conversation about the focal point in the picture, which is a small bust that looks quite old.
In the Photograph “Hardbelly’s Hogan” we are brought into the world of a family of Native Americans. This world is the contrast to that of the Westwaters. The Natives are photographed in a dirt floor hut made of a random assortment of timbers they wear a mixture of traditional clothing and western clothing. All but one Native American is seated and they like the Westwater’s are all intent on the focal point of the photo an elderly native lying on the floor who appears to be sick. The only Non-Native American in the hut is a white woman who is giving medicine to the old man in the center.
There are many similarities in these to portraits of American families. Both groups are staring at a central object or person, and both images involve families. The framing in these two images are almost exactly the same in the Westwater photo the group has three people on the right side of the image and two on the left. The two people on the left and three on the right are split by a man who stands behind a chair separating him from the main group. The focal point is in the center also splitting the two groups of figures. The man farthest to the left is partly out of frame and focus. In “Hardbelly’s Hogan we are shown the exact same set up. Three figures on the right, two on the right split by both the sick man and the white woman. The man furthest to the right is once again out of frame and recedes into the shadows.
These similarities only serve to make the differences in the two images even more noticeable. The settings of the two images are opposites The Westwaters are in a lavish home with expensive furniture and art; the Natives are in hut with no furniture and only a burlap sack hanging on the wall. The Natives wear what looks to be well-worn clothing while the Westwaters have elegant clothes and jewels on. Even the moods depicted in these two images are very different the Native family is gathered around a gravely ill member of their family, they all have downcast eyes and somber expressions. The Westwaters are cheerful laughing and conversing with each other.
The Westwaters are all standing showing that they are in control while all but one Native is seated showing that they are at the mercy of this white doctor and that they rely on her charity to save them. The angle of the shot also lends itself to this end. Hardbelly’s Hogan is shot from above the Natives angled down so that the viewer is seeing them above and perceives him or herself to be superior to the Natives depicted in this image. The shot of the Westwater family is taken from straight on so that the viewer is looking straight in at the seen and feels that the Westwaters are his or her equals.
Even the names of the Photographs give off a similar feeling. “The Westwater Family” we are given the name of the family we are viewing and through this connect more with them. “Hardbelly’s Hogan” this title does not give us the name of the family that we see in the photo, we do not know what this title means perhaps it is the place where the photo is taken, perhaps it does not mean anything but is a fictitious name given to it by the artist. Even if the name is a fictitious it is obvious that we do not know the name of the family that we are viewing or even if they are a family.
In the two Photographs “Hardbelly’s Hogan” and “The Westwater Family” we are shown two contrasting views of the American family. In the first we are shown a poor sick family of Native Americans. They do not have money, the capability to help themselves without the interference of white medicines and charity, or anything to be happy about. In the second image we see The Westwaters, who, on the other hand have wealth, status, everything to be happy about, and health. These two different pictures give us a tailored view of the different worlds of the Westwaters and the Un-named Native American Family contrasting the natives with the Westwaters gives us a bias to the happy, wealthy, and educated Westwaters while giving us a felling of superiority to the Indians crouched below the camera in there small shanty.