01/13/2021
My first encounter with architecture came via my maternal grandfather, Ernst Fischer, a German immigrant. After arriving in the U.S. in the 1920s and spending more than two decades as an architectural apprentice, Ernst founded his own architectural firm shortly after World War II. He designed numerous custom homes, churches, and small commercial buildings throughout Milwaukee and its North Shore and West Side suburbs before retiring in the mid-1970s.
- Ernst on the shore of Lake Michigan.
- Ernst and my grandmother, Helene, newly engaged in 1921.
- Ernst and Helene with my mother, Harriet, celebrating her 1953 college graduation from the University of Wisconsin.
