The Meissner House was built in 1887 and designed by Eugene Liebert, who received his architectural training in Germany and subsequently became a significant influence in Milwaukee. Liebert designed many residences, churches, and commercial structures including the Germania Building (1896), the Buffalo Building (1900), and the magnificent Harnischfeger Mansion (1905) on the northeast corner of Wisconsin Avenue at 35th Street. Liebert incorporated Baroque elements into the Meissner House, which includes clusters of elegant columns with scalloped pediments on the porch, a front dormer, and a bay window.
Moritz Meissner was a German immigrant who operated a wholesale-retail boot and shoe business. He and his family of four children lived on North 29th Street (then called Queen Anne Place) until 1903. In the years following, the house has been a boarding house, a bordello, a piano repair shop, and finally reclaimed and restored as a single-family residence.
The home’s interior has an abundance of curly birch woodwork, which includes four sets of pocket doors, stained glass at the staircase landing, four fireplaces, period chandeliers, and gasoliers, and detailed ornamental plaster on the first floor.
The second owner, Peter A Holtz was well known for his restaurant on the northeast corner of Plankinton and Wisconsin (the “Empire” block in Milwaukee). There were two buildings there before the current Riverside building of today. The second building designed by Otto Strack. You can also get an idea of what the contents of the Peter Holtz home (225? Queen Ann Pl.) had by viewing the probate records I saw on Ancestry.com.