Continue walking east on Highland, crossing Market Street. You'll see the former Blatz Brewery Complex to your left. These particular buildings, and those along Broadway, date to the 1890s are are on the National Register of Historic Places.

Valentin Blatz was born in Germany in 1826 and migrated to America in 1848. He moved to Milwaukee in 1849, and became a brewer (he worked at his father's brewery in Germany) and banker. Blatz established his first brewery in 1850 and combined it with another (Johann Braun's City Brewery) in 1852. The brewery produced Milwaukee's first individually bottled beer in 1874, and was incorporated as the Valentin Blatz Brewing Company in 1889. By the 1900s, Blatz Brewing was the city's third largest brewer. Valentin Blatz died in 1894 in St. Paul, Minnesota while returning to Milwaukee from a trip to California.

The Valentin Blatz Brewing Company produced Blatz Beer from 1851 until 1959, when it was sold to Pabst Brewing Company. Blatz Beer is currently produced by Miller Brewing Company under contract for Pabst.

Today, the Blatz Brewery Complex has been turned into condominiums (169 units) and re-purposed for use by the Milwaukee School of Engineering (MSOE).

The Valentin Blatz Brewing Company Office Building (east side of Broadway, north of Highland) is now MSOE's Alumni Partnership Center. The building features a painting that includes Joseph Schlitz, Frederick Miller, Frederick Pabst, and Valentin Blatz with Gottlieb Heileman included, but in the background (because he did not build his brewery in Milwaukee!). Blatz's face is a cut-out, which could be removed for him to look down on his office staff. The building is built to 3/4 scale, as Valentin Blatz was sensitive about his small stature. The building also contains a three-story walk-in safe.

Another re-purposed Blatz building is the bottling facility, which is now MSOE's Campus Center Building (just south of Highland on west side on Broadway).

As an FYI, the MSOE was founded in 1903 and is a private, non-profit university offering bachelor’s and master’s degrees in engineering, business and nursing.

Our next stop is also on the campus of MSOE: The Grohmann Museum. To reach the museum, begin walking south on Broadway.