Beginning in rustic boardinghouse barrooms serving straight whiskey and lively conversation and evolving into multi-million dollar night clubs with state-of-the-art sound systems entertaining finely-attired patrons, nightlife in Milwaukee has changed considerably as the city has grown and its population has diversified. Most of these places catered to traveling laborers and offered overnight lodgings.
It seems that these early night spots were reserved for men only. However, by the late s, dance halls offered chances for the sexes to intermingle , drawing some of the earliest known moral objections to after-dark entertainment. While the Common Council seemed unable or unwilling to crack down on places where prostitutes plied their trade, they did engage in a prolonged battle against Sunday dancing.
In , Mayor Horace Chase signed a Sunday dancing ban that, per the Sentinel , was soundly backed by the citizenry. Again, the mixing of the sexes was a major point of contention in the battle over Sunday dancing. The Sentinel , which supported the ban, claimed a definite link between female attendance at dance halls and prostitution.
By the end of the Civil War, saloons and taverns were operating in all corners of the city. As early as , police had raided brothels in the area and, by , the German-language press was calling for action to stop prostitution in the area, which was being conducted more and more openly.
Racial issues also began to affect public policy on nightlife in the s. An raid on brothels ignored the whites-only houses but arrested everyone found in the houses of Brown Row. Under Janssen, the periodic raids on downtown brothels and low-class saloons was stopped.
