12 Historical Facts About Fox Point, Wisconsin
Mary Nohl house photo by Kevin Hansen
From a remarkable lakefront art environment to pioneering modernist architecture, century-old settlement sites and roadside bus shelters, Fox Point has far more history hiding among its wooded streets than you might expect.
And 2026 is an especially fitting year to explore it: Fox Point is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its incorporation as a village in 1926.
A numbered map of places connected to Fox Point’s early settlement, architecture, art and transportation history. Private homes are included for context only. Please view them from public streets or rights-of-way.
1. The story behind the “Witch of Fox Point”
Wisconsin Historical Society: Mary Nohl Art Environment (T. Heggland photo, 2005)
Artist Mary Nohl (1914–2001) transformed her family’s lakefront property on Beach Drive into one of Wisconsin’s most extraordinary artist-built environments.
Nohl studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and worked across an enormous range of media, including painting, ceramics, jewelry, sculpture and assemblage. Beginning in earnest in the 1960s, she filled her house and yard with imaginative figures made from concrete, glass, stone, driftwood and found materials.
More than 60 large concrete sculptures eventually populated the property, including its famous grinning 12-foot figure. Local folklore earned Nohl the nickname “The Witch of Fox Point,” even though she was a formally trained working artist rather than the mysterious recluse some of the neighborhood legends portrayed. She apparently had a sense of humor about the nickname, too.
Nohl’s imagery also became connected to Milwaukee music history: artwork associated with her appears on the Violent Femmes’ 1984 album Hallowed Ground.
Important for visitors: the Mary Nohl Art Environment remains private property rather than a conventional walk-in attraction.
The significance of Nohl’s creation eventually received formal recognition.
The Mary L. Nohl Art Environment was added to the Wisconsin State Register in July 2005 and the National Register of Historic Places on October 3, 2005. The National Register nomination describes the remarkably intact property as one of Wisconsin’s most original works of art.
Nohl’s legacy extended far beyond the property itself. When she died in 2001, she left a $9.6 million bequest to the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, creating a fund that has supported visual artists and arts education throughout the Milwaukee area.
2. The Potawatomi tribe was the most influential early presence
Fox Point's recorded history usually starts in the 1840s, but people were living along this stretch of the Lake Michigan shore thousands of years earlier. Woodland-period peoples built burial and effigy mounds throughout southeastern Wisconsin, and by the time French traders reached the area, the Potawatomi were the most influential presence here.
The land only opened to American settlers after the 1833 Treaty of Chicago, which forced the Potawatomi to cede their remaining territory in the region. Every fact on this list happens on ground that was already home to someone.
3. Wisconsin’s first licensed female architect designed a Fox Point landmark
Fox Point has an important connection to Wisconsin architectural history through Lillian Leenhouts, the first woman licensed to practice architecture in Wisconsin.
Together with her husband and architectural partner, Willis Leenhouts, she designed the Friedlander Residence at 6970 N. Barnett Lane, completed in 1952.
The home exemplifies the couple’s restrained Midcentury Modern approach: thoughtful orientation to sunlight, extensive built-ins, a strong relationship between indoor and outdoor spaces, and a design sensitive to its lakefront setting. It became a Milwaukee County landmark in 2006.
The residence is a private home, so it should be appreciated from public areas rather than approached as an attraction.
4. Dutch families shaped early Fox Point
European-American settlement accelerated in the Fox Point area during the 1840s, when numerous Dutch families arrived in the northern portion of the Town of Milwaukee.
More detailed historical accounts identify John Cappon as the first Dutch settler in what is now Fox Point, building a cabin in 1846. By 1855, more than 20 Dutch families were living in the area.
The settlers adapted their farming practices to Fox Point’s heavy clay soil and cultivated crops including wheat, barley, rye and corn. Dutch Reformed congregations, schools and cemeteries became some of the earliest community institutions.
That history remains embedded in Fox Point today — even the Village's official history describes its name as deriving from an early Dutch settlement.
5. Why is it called Fox Point?
The traditional local explanation connects Fox Point’s name to its Lake Michigan shoreline.
Historical accounts describe nineteenth-century surveyors noticing a point of land near what is now Doctors Park that resembled the snout or head of a fox. The landmark reportedly became known as “Foxes Point,” later shortened to Fox Point.
There is a little ambiguity here: the Village's current official history more generally says the name derives from the area's Dutch settlement. So the fox-shaped shoreline story is best understood as the traditional explanation for how the settlement itself acquired the name, rather than a completely settled etymology.
Today, Doctors Park remains one of the best places to experience the dramatic ravines, bluff and Lake Michigan shoreline that helped define the community. The park is at 1870 E. Fox Lane.
6. Fox-topped street signs date to 1927
A year after incorporating, Fox Point held a competition to design street signs for the new village. About 23 entries came in, and draftsman Ernest Fiedler took the $50 prize. His design — black cast iron lettering on a wooden post, crowned with a white-eyed fox — is still standing on street corners across the village today.
The Milwaukee County Historical Society named the signs historic landmarks in 2002, and roughly 95% of the originals survive. There's a catch, though: only the original signs are exempt from federal highway sign standards, so every one that wears out and gets replaced is a small piece of the village's streetscape gone for good. Next time you're out for a walk, look up at the corner. That fox has been there almost a hundred years.
7. Fox Point became a summer escape
Image credit: Wisconsin Historical Society
A very different chapter began in the 1890s, when Milwaukee families increasingly built summer homes along the lake.
Transportation made the rural North Shore easier to reach, first through rail service and eventually electric streetcars. In 1898, the Fox Point Club opened, becoming one of Wisconsin’s earliest golf clubs and an important social center for the growing summer-home community.
The contrast with city life was significant. Fox Point remained rural and lacked services that residents increasingly expected, including municipal water, sewer, garbage collection and widespread electrical infrastructure. That eventually helped push residents toward incorporation.
The resort era didn't last. In the mid-1930s the club's golf links were subdivided into single-family homes, and the summer colony quietly became the year-round suburb it is today.
8. Fox Point became a village in 1926
A small railroad station in Fox Point, Wisconsin. At one point it was on the Chicago and North Western Railway route.
Fox Point officially incorporated as a village in 1926, making 2026 its centennial year.
One major motivation was municipal services. Residents wanted greater control over infrastructure, development and the residential character of the community than the sprawling Town of Milwaukee was able to provide.
A local school district followed in 1927, and the young village soon began developing municipal amenities and parks.
Fox Point was also an early example of planned suburban development in Wisconsin. Historical transportation research notes that its development was influenced by the City Beautiful movement, even though the original planning vision was never fully realized.
9. An 1850s log schoolhouse survives
This photo shows a small log cabin in Doctors Park. A boy, identified only as Kenny, stands on the porch and is as tall as the roof of the cabin.
One of the clearest physical connections to Fox Point’s Dutch settlement era is the Old Dutch Schoolhouse Site and Burial Ground at 8400 N. Fox Lane.
The hewn-log schoolhouse was erected during the winter of 1853–54 by School District No. 9 of the Township of Milwaukee.
It served more than students. The little building was also used for community meetings and religious services by the Reformed Church of Bethlehem, a Dutch Reformed congregation.
An adjoining tract was formally deeded to the church as a cemetery in 1868, although surviving grave markers show that burials occurred there as early as 1854. The property became a Milwaukee County landmark in 1991.
10. Unusual historic bus shelters
The Bell Road Bus Stop Shelter at the southwest corner of N. Lake Drive and Bell Road in Fox Point, built in 1940 and featuring a rustic wood-shingled, hipped roof design.
One of Fox Point’s easiest pieces of history to spot is also one of its most unusual.
Four historic wooden bus shelters remain along Lake Drive:
Green Tree Road — 1937
Bell Road — 1940
Bradley Road — 1940
Dean Road — 1963
The Village built the shelters under the direction of the Fox Point Park Commission. Their rustic wooden designs were intentionally chosen to complement the wooded residential community rather than look like conventional transit structures.
Buses no longer serve the corridor, but Fox Point has continued maintaining the shelters — even using wood shingles during repairs to preserve their appearance.
All four shelters were designated Milwaukee County landmarks in 1994.
They make for a fun mini historical scavenger hunt along Lake Drive.
11. The annexation battles of the 1950s
Fox Point’s modern boundaries were also shaped by the fierce municipal expansion battles that transformed Milwaukee County after World War II.
By the mid-1950s, incorporations and annexations had reduced the once-vast Town of Milwaukee to only scattered pieces of territory.
In 1954, Bayside, Fox Point, Glendale and River Hills coordinated efforts to absorb the remaining Town territory, helping prevent the City of Milwaukee from extending farther into the northeastern suburbs.
The process wasn't entirely tidy. Annexation proceedings involving Fox Point and River Hills led to litigation, and a dispute over approximately 90 remaining acres ultimately reached the Wisconsin Supreme Court. The court upheld Fox Point’s annexation in 1957.
It was an important final chapter in the creation of the independent North Shore communities we know today.
12. Doctors Park was a gift from a world-famous eye doctor
Doctors Park July 31 1929
Dr. Joseph Schneider practiced ophthalmology in Milwaukee for 45 years and treated an estimated 180,000 patients. Born in Silesia and trained in Paris, London, and Vienna, he built a reputation that drew patients from across the country and as far away as China.
His summer home sat on a wooded lakefront estate in Fox Point, and when he died in 1927 he left the property to the City of Milwaukee in his will, with instructions that it be kept as a public park named Doctors Park. He asked that its natural beauty be preserved to encourage bird life, and that a memorial note the gift was made "to my fellow citizens for recreation purposes."
The park opened to the public in 1930 after roughly $26,000 in improvements, and transferred to the Milwaukee County Parks system in 1937, where it remains today. The wooded bluffs, ravines, and winding trails families hike now are the same ones Dr. Schneider wanted protected.
Explore Fox Point history for yourself
Fox Point may be known today for quiet residential streets, wooded ravines and Lake Michigan views, but those landscapes contain nearly two centuries of local history.
You can still find remnants of the early Dutch settlement, trace the village’s transformation into a summer retreat, visit its historic roadside bus shelters and Doctors Park, and discover nationally significant contributions to both modern architecture and American art.
And with Fox Point marking its centennial in 2026, this is a particularly good year to explore those stories. The Village is also hosting special historical and architectural events as part of its 100th-anniversary celebration.
A proposal to add pickleball play and construct courts at The Porticos in Fox Point is moving into the Village review process.