History

Click on the quick links to specific historical info below:
St. Aemilian-Lakeside's Founding: An Act of Charity
Orphanage Life: 1850 - 1963
Residential Treatment: 1963 - 1980
Community Services: 1980 - Present
Today and Beyond

St. Aemilian-Lakeside: An Introduction
St. Aemilian-Lakeside's rich history dates back to our community's earliest days. For more than 150 years, St. Aemilian-Lakeside has cared for the evolving needs of the community, its children, adults, and families.

St. Aemilian-Lakeside began in 1850 as two separate institutions with a common mission - to care for the young city's orphans. Children's needs evolved over the years, and orphanage life eventually was replaced by foster care and therapy services. The agency's parent organizations - St. Aemilian Child Care Center and Lakeside Children's Center - merged in 1989 to strengthen their ability to provide quality care and treatment. As St. Aemilian-Lakeside, Inc., the union of two historic institutions produced one of Wisconsin's largest and most successful non-profit, non-sectarian social service agencies.

As the issues affecting children and families become more complex, St. Aemilian-Lakeside continues to develop more specialized treatment services. Today, our programs are based in the community and centered on the family.

Always dynamic, always evolving, St. Aemilian-Lakeside sets the pace to meet the needs of the children, adults, and families we serve.

St. Aemilian-Lakeside Yesterday...	... And Today

St. Aemilian-Lakeside's Founding: An Act of Charity
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A simple but profound act of charity set the stage for St. Aemilian-Lakeside's founding.

A woman dying of cholera commended the care of her seven sons to Father Martin Kundig, a Diocesan priest. Father Kundig cared for the boys in his home with the help of his two sisters. Their act of charity alerted Milwaukee's bishop, John Martin Henni, to the plight of children orphaned by the cholera epidemic. In late 1849, Henni founded St. Aemilian's Orphan Asylum in a small frame house on Jackson Street, just north of St. John Cathedral. Named for St. Jerome Aemilian, "Patron Saint of Orphans and Neglected Boyhood," the asylum was formally incorporated on October 31, 1850, for the purpose of supporting and educating orphan boys. In 1854, the orphanage moved to the beautiful, rolling grounds of St. Francis Seminary south of the city, under the care of the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi.

Around the same time, a group of Milwaukee's wealthiest and best educated Protestant women began pondering how they could respond to the city's rising number of orphans. In 1849, they organized the Ladies' Benevolent Society to collect and distribute money and goods to the city's poorest residents. A year later, the women opened the Milwaukee Orphans' Asylum in a tenement on Cass Street, on Milwaukee's east side.

Orphanage Life: 1850-1963
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Both St. Aemilian's Orphan Asylum and The Milwaukee Orphans' Asylum would grow and prosper for more than 100 years. Thanks to frequent and generous bequests, the Milwaukee Orphans' Asylum relocated in 1887 to imposing new quarters at the corner of Prospect and North Avenues. Built to accommodate 100 children, the three-story brick building featured Gothic arched windows and a stone tower. Growth continued at St. Aemilian's as well, with a new building completed in 1896. Stately and spacious, it was considered a national model for institutions of its kind.

Orphanage life was regimented and disciplined. Children at the Milwaukee Orphans' Asylum circa 1860 dressed in uniforms and slept in identical beds lined up against the walls. Schedules were rigid. The children woke at 6 a.m. (5 a.m. during the summer), dressed, and assembled in the school room for Bible reading and prayer, followed by breakfast and a morning of lessons for the older children. Following lunch came housekeeping, needlework and gardening, a simple supper, prayers and bedtime. The youngest children spent most of their time at quiet play.

At St. Aemilian's, in addition to tending to their studies, the boys were expected to wash dishes, sweep and polish floors, and make their own beds. A high priority was placed on outdoor recreation and holiday programs.

A fire destroyed St. Aemilian's in 1930. The cause of the fire was never determined, and miraculously there was no loss of life. The orphanage set up a "temporary" home in a former Lutheran seminary at North 60th and West Lloyd Streets, but the orphans' stay would be considerably longer than expected. Though a 37-acre site at 8901 West Capitol Drive was acquired in 1937, plans to build a permanent facility there would not be realized for nearly 20 years.

In 1943, the Milwaukee Orphans' Asylum was officially renamed Lakeside Children's Center.

Residential Treatment: 1963-1980
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Between 1930 and 1965, the number of orphans living in the United States dropped from 500,000 to 50,000, a development traced to improved medical care, the expansion of Social Security, and a growing body of professional social workers aggressively promoting adoption and foster care. The effect on both St. Aemilian's and Lakeside Children's Center was dramatic. Many of the orphans - particularly the youngest - were adopted. Older children who were not adopted were often indentured as domestic workers or farm hands, earning a small wage.

The nature of the children needing residential care had radically changed. By 1950, for example, only five of the 45 boys living at St. Aemilian's were "orphans" in the traditional sense. Most of the children living at both facilities by the early 1960s were moderately or severely emotionally disturbed.

The missions of both institutions were poised for change. Gradually, therapeutic treatment for emotionally disturbed children began to take precedence over custodial care of dependent juveniles. In 1963, to symbolize this change in programming, both St. Aemilian's and Lakeside Children's Center became residential treatment centers.

By 1965, St. Aemilian's had totally revamped its operation. The Capitol Drive building was completely remodeled to feature five group living units. Each unit housed 8 to 10 boys and was staffed by trained houseparents, both lay and religious. The program included full schooling as well as group and individual psychotherapy. Its goal: to restore and rebuild the emotional health of boys 6 to 12 years old.

At Lakeside the emphasis had shifted from custodial care to what was called "therapeutic education." Lakeside replaced its Gothic-style orphanage with frame cottages in the 1940s. The rationale: to move away from the institutional approach of the past and create a more family-oriented setting.

St. Aemilian's continued to be operated by the Milwaukee Archdiocese until 1969, when it was formally re-incorporated as St. Aemilian Child Care Center Inc., a non-profit, non-sectarian residential and day treatment center. Financial support that once came from the Milwaukee Archdiocese now came from the various counties contracting for services with St. Aemilian's.

By 1969, the Lakeside approach was described as a cross between child welfare and child psychiatry, a move designed to provide "total treatment of children's ego deficiencies."

Community Services: 1980-Present
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On January 1, 1989, in order to enhance the treatment program and become stronger financially, the two centers merged to become St. Aemilian-Lakeside, Inc., a private, not-for-profit, non-sectarian residential treatment center for boys. Able to treat a total of 128 boys at its two campuses, St. Aemilian-Lakeside became Wisconsin's largest child-care facility, serving children between the ages of 6 and 15. Then, as now, the center was licensed by the State of Wisconsin, accredited by the Council on Accreditation, and funded by the counties and other social service agencies placing children at the center. In 1994, the agency closed the Lakeside campus and consolidated services at the Capitol Drive location.

By 1992, nearly half of the boys being placed in residential treatment at St. Aemilian-Lakeside were found to be victims of sexual abuse, prompting the development of COMPASS, a specialized treatment program for both abuse victims and juvenile offenders. The program includes a special family component that targets abusive family dynamics.

In addition to changes in residential treatment, the new St. Aemilian-Lakeside continued to grow into a multi-service agency, providing Day Treatment, Treatment Foster Care, Outpatient Services and a number of other community-based outreach programs. The mix of services continued to expand in the 1990s to include Care Coordination and Foster Parent Education.

Friendships Unlimited and Spring City Corner Clubhouse are social and transitional employment programs for adults with mental illness. With these programs, St. Aemilian-Lakeside extended its expertise in social services to a new population.

And in 2004, St. Aemilian-Lakeside established Capitol West Academy, a public charter school, applying its experience in helping children succeed to the mainstream student population.

St. Aemilian-Lakeside: Today and Beyond
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St. Aemilian-Lakeside, Inc., has evolved in ways Bishop Henni, the Sisters of St. Fracis of Assisi, and the members of the Ladies' Benevolent Society could never have imagined. As the staff and supporters of St. Aemilian-Lakeside continue to navigate a rapidly changing society, we are eager to further the mission and work the agency's founders embarked on two centuries ago.