Beginning as Schwartzburg, an undersized trading center at what is now the intersection of Teutonia and Villard avenues, North Milwaukee is a city that joined a city. For more than thirty years, from 1897 to 1929, it was an independent suburb, operating its own schools, publishing its own newspapers, and developing its own personality. The old suburb is an urban neighborhood today. It provides a unique setting for the community's current residents, most of them African Americans, who are writing their own chapter in North Milwaukee's history.