Garland Milk Bottle

Milk Bottle Today

Advertisement (March 23, 1935 Spokesman-Review)

The Garland Milk Bottle was built in 1935 (along with its sister location downtown) and it was “designed to build better men and women by making dairy products more attractive to boys and girls” (Spokesman Review, March 23, 1935). With a cost of $3,700 per building, the Milk Bottles were originally designed as a “retail outlet” for dairy merchant Paul E. Newport, who had plans of building six such operations, but settled on the two still standing today.

Milk Bottle as 2nd hand shop

            Notable for its unique architecture, taking the shape of a 38 foot high Milk Bottle (naturally), one could buy all sorts of dairy products from the Garland location, including ice cream, for forty years under Newport family ownership until 1974 when it went out of business. Under the new ownership of Shirley Wright and Virginia Burrill the former diary retailer was renamed, “A Little 2^nd Hand Shop in the Giant Milk Bottle,” and began selling a “mishmash of castaways ranging from old postcards that sell for 25 cents to an 1890 Chippendale slant-front desk that sells for $2,500” (Milwaukee Journal, July 22, 1983). In 1986 the milk bottle was converted once again, this time into an ice cream and dessert parlor under the new ownership of Bill and Nola Graham.

Milk Bottle on Fire

            Today ‘Mary Lou’s Milk Bottle’ is an old-timey diner with award-winning milkshakes, along with homemade burgers and sandwiches so affordable one wonders how they stay in business. Disaster struck however in September of 2011 when a fire burnt down most of the Milk Bottle and the neighboring Ferguson’s Cafe, which is historic in its own right. After nearly a year of rebuilding the Milk Bottle is back up and running. Aside from a few minor renovations that included hollowing out the ‘neck’ of the bottle and some upgraded cooking equipment, one would hardly notice a difference between what it was before the fire and what it is today.