Herzinger's Meat Market

This next business is another interesting structure here in Cedarburg. Not only is its business influential here for decades, it also provides a very personal story to the family that worked and establish this market, grocery store, and meat butchering operation. The building is very unique, but the family behind the building is also very unique.

Frank Herziger settled in Cedarburg from Germany. He came from a long line of German meat butchers with shops in Southeastern Wisconsin. When the couple settled in Cedarburg, Frank Herziger, with his butcher experience, decided to open up a meat market and business, established from about 1900 to 1904. The establishment's exact date is unknown, so for an educated guess, were going to go with 1904. The Herziger's residence would be across the store when the business was in operation. 

Classical styles mainly swayed the building as a whole. The structure was specifically built chiefly on a base of cut stone and the heavily influential Cream City Brick that graces some buildings here in Cedarburg. You can see curved bricks covering the building's front door if you look very closely. This building was explicitly used and resided as a butcher's house, a meat cooler, and a smokehouse oven used to cook the meat. The oven was over two stories tall and is still in the building today. What is also shown in the structure is a large dining room that served lunch to residents, visitors, and locals as a whole. As the title gives it, this building served as a meat marketing operation until the mid-1950s

 Once Frank and Catherine moved into the area, the meat marketing building was in business. They had a son named William J. Herziger. William's father expected him to follow him into the butchering business due to a butcher's house's grim and horrid effects in the early twentieth-century United States. However, William decided not to follow in the family business due to family hardship and lived along Cedar Creek, influencing him for the rest of his life. He was expected of this due to his grandfather, Emil Herziger, a butcher who opened the original shop in 1875. His father, Frank, followed in his grandfather's footsteps and expected William to do the same. But as shown begore earlier, he decided not to.

The couple also had a daughter named Laura, who would later marry one of the influential individuals in Cedarburg named Frederick Hilgen. Frank also had a passion for music and photography, played the violin, and as a photographer. Frank would meet Cathrine through a musical orchestra in which his future wife was playing the piano. Since Frank was born in Germany, Cathrine was born initially in Cedarburg and attended the Wisconsin College of Music, where she enhanced her piano skills; she also gave piano lessons to students who wanted to learn how to play it. She would be the organist for St. Francis Borgia Church just south on Washington Avenue. Frank's photos would be collected into a book called Reflections Of Old Cedarburg. Frank would also be inspired to be an engineer or an architect. Unfortunately, he would die when William was four years old in 1922, following his appendix being infected. Willliam would be famous for being involved in the Manhattan Project, the program that developed the Atomic Bomb that was one of the compelling factors (including the Soviet Union invading Japanese occupied Manchuria) that forced the Empire of Japan to surrender in September of 1945. 

A Walk Through Yesterday: In Cedarburg, Wisconsin. 2005.

Cedarburg History: Legend And Lore. Cedarburg, Wisconsin. Library Of Congress, 1976.

William ‘Bill’ J. Herziger, 96, July 21st 2013. Accessed April 28th 2022. http://www.gmtodayobitarchives.com/ozwash/obits/2013/08_August/13/William-J-Herziger.htm.

Wisconsin Historical Society, Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory, Herzinger's Meat Market, Cedarburg, Ozaukee County, Wisconsin, 13409. https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Property/HI13409