The Martin Drive neighborhood on the Near West Side may be on the small side, but its neighborhood presence is mighty.
Every year, the Martin Drive Neighborhood Association works together to plan activities, take care of the community garden and hold meetings with local elected officials.
By activating shared spaces, the group aims to connect residents so they can look out for each other, according to Terri Bartlett, a 20-year-plus Martin Drive resident.
“Our neighborhood is space. But our space is filled with a community, and that’s the difference between a normal neighborhood and a neighborhood who’s active,” Bartlett said.
History of the neighborhood group
A group of Martin Drive residents started meeting and organizing in 1989, according to Pat Mueller, who has lived in the neighborhood for over 35 years.
“Our neighborhood was really slipping back then and we were all seeing it, and so we came up with this plan and we changed quite a few things,” Mueller said.
Neighborhood Housing Services of Milwaukee, no longer open, began working with the Martin Drive Neighborhood Association in 1993 to increase homeownership and provide housing resources.
One of the first projects they organized involved surveying the exterior condition of houses in the neighborhood and offering a rebate for paint and repairs.
Diversity of Martin Drive
A data analysis by John Johnson, a Lubar Center research fellow at the Marquette University Law School, found that Martin Drive is one of over a dozen Milwaukee neighborhoods with no racial or ethnic majority group, according to the 2020 census.
The neighborhood’s population is 40% Black, 31% white, 11% Asian and 10% Latino, according to Johnson’s research.
Martin Drive has a history of diversity going back decades, according to Lisa Heuler Williams, a senior researcher and policy analyst at the Center for Economic Development at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
“As more diverse people have moved in, white people haven’t necessarily moved out,” Heuler Williams said.
She is researching the common characteristics of integrated neighborhoods like Martin Drive to find ways to improve Milwaukee’s reputation as a highly segregated city.
“There’s hope to be found in these neighborhoods as models of integration, of stable neighborhoods,” Heuler Williams said.
Connectiveness of the neighborhood
Heuler Williams said young people and families are moving into the neighborhood, which has apartments and a housing stock that is mostly duplexes.
“What they like about the neighborhood is that it’s safe and that the cost of housing makes it accessible,” Heuler Williams said.
Neighbors welcome new residents when they move in, according to Heuler Williams.
Bartlett said maintaining regular communication with neighbors is important, such as “taking walks in your neighborhood, talking to your neighbors, seeing what’s new, offering words of appreciation and encouragement.”
Mueller said she checked in on an elderly woman in the neighborhood whose partner died recently and discovered her phones didn’t work.
“I have somebody who’s willing to help her or to give us a phone, a landline phone. …That’s what a neighborhood should be,” she said.
Working together
The neighborhood association has a coordinating committee, but all residents are encouraged to participate in meetings, events and planning.
For instance, Bartlett works with regular volunteers to organize the neighborhood’s nighttime trick-or-treating for Halloween, a major event which has been running for 32 years.
On the last Friday in October, the group blocks off a street in the neighborhood and volunteers are assigned spots to hand out candy.
“We register the houses that are part of it, and we register the children that are part of it,” Mueller said. “We also have people who are kind of roving the street.”
Bartlett and neighbors showed off the neighborhood’s creative talents with a haunted garden event in the Martin Drive Community Garden at North 46th and West Vliet streets.
Residents acted in spooky scenes and contributed lights, pumpkins, food and other props.
“They all committed to next year already, so I’m pleased as punch,” Bartlett said.
Other activities
Like other neighborhood groups, the Martin Drive Neighborhood Association organizes events throughout the year, including clean-ups, a rummage sale, a summer movie series, activities in the community garden, a summer picnic and a winter potluck with caroling.
The group collaborates with local businesses and nonprofits, like the Washington Park Media Center, 4303 W. Vliet St., which livestreamed a question-and-answer session with Milwaukee County Supervisor Sky Capriolo in July.
Denizen MKE hosts a winter music series called 43rd + Vliet with the Washington Park Media Center and other neighboring businesses.
Mueller said she thinks the neighborhood’s events are encouraging families to buy and occupy duplexes.
“I think it’s a lot of these community events that have changed that atmosphere or that recognition of our neighborhood,” Mueller said.
Heuler Williams also recognizes the impact of the Martin Drive Neighborhood Association on the area.
“This is a small neighborhood with tight connectivity,” she said. “I would give a lot of credit to the neighborhood association for that.”
Meredith Melland is the neighborhoods reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
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