To visit Brewers Hill is to see firsthand the American city's capacity for reinvention. One of Milwaukee's most historic--and most desirable--neighborhoods was, not many years ago, one of its most blighted, a place where few callers came on legitmate business after dark. As recently as the 1980s, the community was pockmarked with vacant lots where homes had once stood, and those that remained seemed destined for the wrecking ball. However, preservationists began to buy up surviving properties and, house by house, and block by block, the spirit of renewal spread inward. The result is an urban hybrid of old and new.