Kenosha, Wisconsin

Kenosha, Wisconsin
Official seal of Kenosha, Wisconsin Seal
Nickname:  "K-town" "Keno" "Kenowhere"
Location of Kenosha within Wisconsin
Country	United States
State	Wisconsin
Counties	Kenosha
Settled	1836
Government
• Mayor	John M. Antaramian
Population
• City	96,845
• Metro	appx. 160,000
Time zone	UTC-6 (CST)
• Summer (DST)	UTC-5 (CDT)
ZIP Code	53140, 53141, 53142, 53143, 53144,
Area code	262
Website	www.kenosha.org

Kenosha (pronounced [kəˈnoʃə]) is a city in Kenosha County, Wisconsin. It is estimated that Kenosha's population as of 2006 is approximately 96,845. Kenosha is the county seat of Kenosha County,Template:GR the southeasternmost county in Wisconsin.

On the southwestern shores of Lake Michigan, Kenosha is the fourth largest city in Wisconsin behind Milwaukee, Madison, and Green Bay. Kenosha is considered to be greater Chicagoland's northernmost suburb at 60 miles distance from the Chicago epicenter; Kenosha is also 35 miles south of Milwaukee

History

The greater Kenosha area is of high archeological interest since the discovery of pre-Clovis culture settlements in the late 20th century. These prehistoric settlements date to the approximate era of the Wisconsin glaciation. The Paleo Indians, as archaeologists call these peoples, first settled in the area at least 13,500 years ago.

The Potawatomi originally named the area gnozhé ("place of the Pike"). The first white settlers arrived in the early 1830s from Hannibal and Troy, New York. As more settlers arrived and the first post office was established, the community was first known as Pike in 1836. In the ensuing years the area became an important Great Lakes shipping port, and the village was once again renamed, this time to Southport. ("Southport" is still the name given to a southeast-side neighborhood, park and elementary school as well as several businesses). In 1850, another change brought the growing city (and later Kenosha County) its current title, an Anglicized version of the early name gnozhé. Kenoshans often refer affectionately to their city as "K-Town", "K-Nowhere" and "Keno" (the latter often adopted over the decades on various local businesses and most notably on Kenosha's historic 1949 Keno Family Outdoor Theatre, Wisconsin's oldest drive-in theatre). Kenosha teenagers and those somewhat disaffected with the town often call it "Kenowhere," referring to the belief that there is little to do for amusement.

Kenosha has four historic districts listed on the National Register of Historic Places, among them the Kenosha Civic Center. The 1935 art deco Southport Beach House is also listed.

In June of 1993, the City installed reproductions of the historic Sheridan LeGrande streetlamps that were especially designed for Kenosha by Westinghouse Electric in 1928; these can be seen on Sixth Avenue between 54th and 59th Streets.

Geography

Kenosha is located at 42°34′56″N 87°50′44″W (42.582220, -87.845624).Template:GR

According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of 62.1 km² (24.0 mi²). 61.7 km² (23.8 mi²) of it is land and 0.4 km² (0.2 mi²) of it (0.63%) is water.

Kenosha's eastern boundary is Lake Michigan and is bordered by the towns of Somers and Bristol to the north and west respectively and the village of Pleasant Prairie to the south.

Demographics

As of the censusTemplate:GR of 2000, there were 90,352 people, 34,411 households, and 22,539 families residing in the city.

The population density was 1,465.1/km² (3,795.1/mi²). There were 36,004 housing units at an average density of 583.8/km² (1,512.3/mi²). The racial makeup of the city was 83.64% White, 7.68% African American, 0.44% Native American, 0.99% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 4.83% from other races and 2.38% from two or more races. 9.96% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race.

There were 34,411 households out of which 34.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them: 47.1% were married couples living together, 13.9% had a female householder with no husband present and 34.5% were non-families. 28.4% of all households were made up of individuals and 10.3% had someone living alone who is 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.54 and the average family size was 3.13.

In the city the population included 27.2% under the age of 18, 10.1% from 18 to 24, 31.5% from 25 to 44, 19.0% from 45 to 64, and 12.2% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 34 years. For every 100 females there were 96.7 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 93.2 males.

Economy

Kenosha's median annual household income ($53,035) substantially exceeds the national and state income averages ($46,326 and $47,105 respectively), according to United States Census figures released in late August, 2006. Similarly the percentage of Kenosha's low-income residents (8.7%) is markedly below national and statewide figures of 12.6 and 10.2 percentage points. A 2007 Associated Press analysis said that welfare caseloads in Kenosha County are at a record low of 223, or 0.14% of the approximate population of 161,000.

Years ago a busy center of manufacturing, Kenosha is today largely a suburban "bedroom community" within the Chicago-Milwaukee megalopolis, most often attracting new residents from Illinois, which leads to Kenosha's appellation as Chicago's northernmost suburb. With several area transportation options, many residents commute to their places of employment, often beyond the borders of Kenosha County.

Kenosha's downtown and adjacent lakeshore districts have seen $250 million in new construction over the past decade.

(Between 1902 and 1988 Kenosha produced millions of automobiles and trucks under such well-remembered marques as Jeffery, Rambler, Nash, Hudson, LaFayette, and American Motors Corporation (AMC). American Motors once operated two assembly plants in the city until AMC was merged into what was then the Chrysler Corporation in 1987. An engine plant for DaimlerChrysler remains, but the American Motors lakeshore assembly plant was demolished in 1989 and repatriated into upscale HarborPark. The lakeshore plant closing is documented in Kathryn Marie Dudley's "The End of the Line: New Lives in Postindustrial America". AMC's predecessor in the area, Nash Motors, was formed in Kenosha in 1916 by Charles W. Nash, for whom a 47-acre westside park and an elementary school, scheduled to open in the fall of 2007, are named.

Kenosha's employment and residency demographics are mainly white-collar, and tourism is a major contributor to the city's economy which saw a record $211.4 million tourist dollars in 2005, a rise of three percent over 2004 despite flat tourist spending of $11.81 billion statewide.

The city's largest employer is the multi-level educational system. (see #Education)

Kenosha's largest private employer is Abbott Laboratories, which has recently been expanding its local real-estate holdings.

According to the Public Policy Forum, Kenosha's property values rose 8.8% in 2004. and the September 1, 2006 Kenosha News reported that a January 2006 report lists a 10.38 percent jump in area real-estate valuations while the average Kenosha property tax bill is $3,669.

Law and government

Kenosha has a mayor, considered to be the chief executive, and a city administrator, considered to be the chief operating officer. The mayor is elected every four years. The city's Common Council consists of 17 aldermen from each of Kenosha's 17 districts (each district having two wards), elected for two year terms in even-numbered years.

The mayor of Kenosha over four terms since April 1992 is John M. Antaramian; he is the longest serving mayor in the city's history. In late 2006, Antaramian was awarded the Robert B. Bell, Sr. Best Public Partner Award for his advocacy towards quality real estate development.

Transportation

File:Cfiles11533.jpg

A Kenosha streetcar.

See also: Streetcars in Kenosha, Wisconsin

Kenosha has been served by rail service to and from Chicago since 10:30 am on Saturday, May 19, 1855, when the predecessors to the Chicago and North Western Railway, the Milwaukee and Chicago Railway Company (originally the Illinois Parallel Railroad) and the original Lake Shore Railroad (later the Green Bay, Milwaukee and Chicago Railway) were officially joined with great ceremony just south of today's 52nd Street. Passenger service began on May 28, 1866 and continues to the present day.

Kenosha has the only Metra station in Wisconsin, with nine inbound and nine outbound trains each weekday, although not all Metra Union Pacific North Line trains terminate and originate in Kenosha; most terminate at Waukegan, Illinois to the south.[2] Plans are underway to extend Regional Transportation Authority passenger service northwards from the Kenosha Metra Station through Racine County and into Milwaukee via the proposed KRM Line[3].

Kenosha was the first city to color-code transit routes (with the Blue, Green, Red and Orange Lines) and the first city to utilize electric trolley buses in full transit service, both occurring on February 14, 1932 {Canfield, Joseph M. TM: The Milwaukee Electric Railway & Light Company, CERA Bulletin 112. Chicago: Central Electric Railfans' Assoc., 1972.}.

Kenosha is served by the major expressway Interstate 94 between Chicago and Milwaukee, and also by Amtrak's Hiawatha Line service (via the Sturtevant station in Racine County) between Chicago and Milwaukee, which runs several times daily.

The street system in Kenosha is somewhat unusual; while numbered streets run east-west and numbered avenues run north-south as in many American cities, street numbering commences at Kenosha County's northern border (County Trunk Highway KR) rather than at the city's center. ('Roads' are diagonal thoroughfares, 'courts' are short north-south avenues, and 'places' are short east-west streets.) As such, the downtown area is in the area between 50th and 60th streets. Avenue numbers increase as one heads west from the lakefront. This numbering system continues through all of Kenosha County west ending with 408th Ave, while north-south roads end at the Illinois state line with 128th St. (Edmonton, Alberta has a similar numbering system.)

Culture

Museums

Completed in 2000, the Kenosha Public Museum is located on the Lake Michigan shoreline. Its main exhibit is a prehistoric Wooly Mammoth skeleton uncovered in western Kenosha in 1992. The bones revealed new clues about ancient American history; cut marks on the bones indicate that the animals were butchered by humans using stone tools. Carbon dating of those bones indicates their age to be 12,500 years old, one thousand years earlier than the previously accepted presence of humans in the Americas. The museum also displays other Ice Age and fine-art exhibits.

Kenosha's 59,000-square-foot Civil War Museum is under construction and is scheduled to open in the spring of 2008. It will offer an interactive experience in the role of six Midwestern states before, during and after the American Civil War.

The Dinosaur Discovery Museum, designated a federal repository, opened in August, 2006 within the historic Old Post Office adjoining the 56th Street streetcar line at Tenth Avenue, and includes an on-site paleontology laboratory operated through the Carthage College Institute of Paleontology.

The Kenosha Transit Carhouse at 724 54th Street which houses Kenosha's historic fleet of PCC streetcars is occasionally open for guided tours.

A Childrens Museum is also planned for the upper floors of the Orpheum Building on Sixth Avenue at 59th Street, currently occupied by the Laboratory Toy Store.

Music

Summer band performances have been Kenosha favorites for over eighty years, traditionally by the Kenosha American Legion Band (renamed the Kenosha Concert Band in 1963 and now the Kenosha Pops Concert Band.) Since 1988 the concerts have been at Kenosha's Sesquicentennial Bandshell in Pennoyer Park each Wednesday from June 14 to August 2. Admission is free, and it is recommended that attendees bring their own lawn blankets or seating.

The Kenosha Lakeshore Youth Philharmonic offers an intensive orchestral experience to middle school and high school musicians.

The Kenosha Vocal Arts program sponsors the Opera a la Carte evening concert series featuring middle school, high school and college singers.

Band-O-Rama is a citywide public-school concert held annually since the mid-1950s, and features the Kenosha Unified School District's grades 5-through-12 bands totaling about 1,700 students. It typically begins with the National Anthem by grades 7-12; then, each grade plays several selections. At the finale, the massed bands offer John Phillip Sousa's "The Stars and Stripes Forever" (Sousa's band often gave concerts in Kenosha.) The KUSD music program has long been a national model, and its student concerts are led by guest conductors of world renown. The Band-O-Rama in particular usually sells over 3000 tickets over the weekend it is offered.

The Kenosha Symphony Orchestra under Maestra Miriam Burns is highly regarded, and concerts are in the acoustically-correct Reuther Central Auditorium at Walter Reuther Central High School in downtown Kenosha.

Since 2002, the outdoor Peanut Butter and Jam Concert Series has been held every Wednesday in August. For 2007 the series has been changed and extended to every Thursday during the months of July and August with a both a noontime and evening concert. Approximately three hundred attend each concert at Veteran's Memorial Park.

Lincoln Park Live! concerts began in 2005 on the Lincoln Park lawns near the Warren Taylor Memorial Gardens.

A number of outdoor jazz events are offered throughout the summer months, often at the historic Kemper Center.

The Kenosha CYO Band is one of several CYO Bands remaining in the country; the remainder are located in the East.

The city was until 2005 the international headquarters of the Barbershop Harmony Society, an international fraternal organization of male singers. The organization is now based in Nashville, Tennessee.

Education

Kenosha is home to Carthage College with over 2,000 fulltime students, the University of Wisconsin-Parkside with 5,000 students, mostly commuters, and Gateway Technical College. (The three colleges operate their own on-campus radio stations.) Concordia University Wisconsin, Cardinal Stritch University and Marquette University all maintain Kenosha branch campuses.

Kenosha is served by the Kenosha Unified School District. The district has twenty-six public elementary schools, six middle schools and five major high schools: Mary D. Bradford High School, George Nelson Tremper High School, Indian Trail Academy, Lakeview Tech Academy and Reuther Central High School. Eighty percent of Kenosha's fourth-graders score 'proficient' and 'advanced' on reading tests, according to National Assessment of Educational Progress tests. Kenosha also has a number of faith-based schools and independent academies, including St. Joseph's High School, Armitage Academy, Kenosha Montessori School, Shoreland Lutheran High School, the Brompton Academy, the Dimensions of Learning Academy, the Christian Life School, and the LakeView Advanced Technology Center. A number of professional schools are located in the city.

The Kenosha Public Library is part of the Kenosha County Library System, and operates four locations throughout the city. Daniel H. Burnham designed the 1900 Beaux-Arts architectured Gilbert M. Simmons Library, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

Media

Kenosha receives radio and television stations from Milwaukee and Chicago. Kenosha is considered a part of the Chicago radio market by Arbitron but a part of the Milwaukee television market by Nielsen. The majority of the Milwaukee and Chicago AM, FM and TV stations can be received in Kenosha. Five radio stations transmit from the Kenosha area: WLIP (1050 AM, Oldies), WGTD (91.1 FM, fine-arts/public radio/classics/jazz), WIIL (95.1 FM, mainstream rock and roll), WIPZ (88.5 FM, University of Wisconsin - Parkside, and WWDV (96.9 FM, simulcasting WDRV from Chicago) Kenosha also has a public access cable channel on channel 14, available to subscribers of Time Warner Cable.

Regional newspapers include the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, Racine's Journal Times, Westosha Report, Kenosha News, Happenings Magazine, Pleasant Prairie Sun, and News Sun.

Sports and recreation

Golf

Kenosha has a number of championship golf courses. Petrifying Springs Golf Course was named the "No. 1 Sporty Course in Wisconsin" The Washington Park Golf Course was dedicated on February 18, 1922, and its 1937 English-cottage clubhouse is a city landmark.

Parks

Kenosha is ringed by an emerald necklace of recreational city and county parks, and has eighteen miles of Lake Michigan shoreline frontage, nearly all of which is public. The city has 74 municipal parks, totalling 781.52 acres

Kenosha's Washington Park includes the oldest operating velodrome in the United States (1927) at Washington Bowl. The Kenosha Velodrome Association sponsors American Bike Racing sanctioned races as well as training sessions at the "bowl" throughout the summer. Races are held on Tuesday evenings beginning in mid-May and continuing through August. Free seating is available on the inside of the track, and on important race days food and music is offered.

Kenosha in culture and in Trivia

• Early in his career, lyricist Howard Dietz (author of "Dancing In The Dark" and other standards) wrote a song called "Why Did I Leave Wisconsin? Kenosha Wisconsin". {ASCAP Biographical Dictionary, 4th edition, Bowker 1980]
• Films made in Kenosha include The Belle of Kenosha (1923), The Betsy (1978), The Paint Job (1991), Fever Lake (1996), Stricken (1998), The Last Great Ride (1999), the 5 Dark Souls series, and The Smokers (2000). For Keeps? (1988) was set in Kenosha.
• It is believed that the city referenced in Booth Tarkington's 1918 Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Magnificent Ambersons was Kenosha and that the Minifer family therein was based upon the family of Orson Welles, with which the author was a personal friend. (Some feel that the character of George Minifer referred to Orson Welles himself, whose full name was George Orson Welles.)
• Ray Bolger, Gordon MacRae, Bibi Osterwald and Carleton Carpenter sang and danced "In My Kenosha Canoe" through 327 performances of Three To Make Ready on Broadway.
• In Joseph Heller's Catch-22, the chaplain is from Kenosha.
• In Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow the phrase "You never did the Kenosha Kid" (whose meaning is variously altered by different punctuation) is repeatedly present.
• Western author Forbes Parkhill's character "The Kenosha Kid" appeared in the August 1931 issue of Western Rangers magazine.
• The fictional polka band in Home Alone was called the Kenosha Kickers (and its top-selling record was "The Twin Lakes Polka").
• The Kenosha Maroons were a National Football League team in 1924. Of its five games played, it lost four games and tied one. (The franchise today is that of the Washington Redskins.)
• In an episode of The Cosby Show, the family is playing a game where they must name a city starting with a particular letter of the alphabet. When they get to K, Bill says "Kenosha".
• Kenosha is also frequently referenced in the sitcom That '70s Show, most notably when the group goes to a disco as well a the first Stars Wars movie. Although, early promotional material for the show as well as the show's official Web site place "Point Place" the fictional city in which That 70s Show is set, near Green Bay, Wisconsin, halfway across the state.
• Milton K. Ozaki's hardboiled-detective novels (Wake Up and Scream, City of Sin, The Case of the Cop's Wife and others) were set in the fictional city of "Stillwell" but with barely-disguised Kenosha locales and personages.
• The music video for Weezer's song "Buddy Holly," set in Arnold's Drive-In from Happy Days, starts with Al Molinaro introducing the band as "Kenosha, Wisconsin's own." (The band is primarily California-based, and Molinaro made the reference simply to plug his own hometown.)
• The character of Sandy Benson in The Girl Who Came Gift-Wrapped (1974, played by Karen Valentine) is from Kenosha, and speaks the memorable quote: "The whole world's working on a new morality, and in Kenosha they still refer to Ingrid Bergman as 'that woman'."
• In two Nickelodeon cartoons, references to Kenosha was made. The episodes are "Danny Phantom" episode 7: Bitter Reunions-near the end, after the defeat of Plasmius, Maddie Phenton proclaims, "You kicked that ghost's butt all the way to Kenosha!" In "The Fairly OddParents" episode 56: Genie Meanie Minie Moe (Norm the Genie introduced a different Timmy Turner as being from Kenosha).
• In the film Scary Movie 3, as the protagonists are searching for the lighthouse from the movie, they view photos of the Kenosha North Pier Lighthouse.
• In the TV Series, 'Without A Trace', the character Samantha comes from Kenosha originally, and her mother still lives there.
• Brad Thor's novel, "BlowBack" has a character in it that is from Kenosha.
• Mark Alan Ruffalo (born November 22, 1967 in Kenosha, Wisconsin) is an American actor.

Notable Kenoshans

See also: List of Kenoshans

Many Kenosha citizens have achieved national and world renown in a variety of fields. On June 7, 1990 a Chicago Tribune feature article ("The Kenosha Connection") marveled at the large number of Kenoshans in the arts and sciences.

Rankings

Kenosha has received high rankings in several "Best-of" national surveys of American communities in recent year.

• In its 2005 survey of United States communities, Money listed Kenosha as 94th on its list of "Best Places to Live".
• The April 1997 Readers Digest ranked Kenosha in second place within its list of "Best Places to Raise a Family"
• Worldwide ERC rates Kenosha among the "Best Cities for Relocating Families" in the 500,000 to 250,000 metro population category.
• In 2005, the Milken Institute rated Kenosha as the 86th among the largest 200 metro areas in the United States in its "Best Performing Cities" list
• In May 2006, Inc. Magazine listed Kenosha at 45 on its "Hottest Midsize Cities" list.

Sister cities

Kenosha's four sister cities are:

• Cosenza, Italy (since 1979))
• Quezon City, Philippines (since 1986)
• Wolfenbüttel, Germany (since 1970))
• Douai, France (since 1981))

External links

• Kenosha Convention and Visitors bureau
• City of Kenosha Municipal website