To walk the streets of the Historic Third Ward is to experience urban possibility in its fullest dimensions. The neighborhood began as a marsh, emerged from the muck to become a center of commerce, survived a catastrophic fire, provided a home for two of Milwaukee's largest and poorest ethnic groups, and then, after a period of virtual abandonment, was reborn in the late twentieth century as a destination neighborhood, a capital of chic that bears more than a passing resemblance to SoHo or the South Loop. The Third Ward has had more lives than the luckiest cat.