User:Rpjoneswiki/sandbox

Life and career
John Plankinton was one of the early industrialists in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Arriving in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, at age twenty-four with about four hundred dollars, Plankinton opened a butcher shop and earned twnenty-five thousand dollars by the end of his first year. By 1847, he was buying random lots of land west of the Milwaukee River, including twenty-two acres in the Menomonee Valley and several city blocks west of Water Street all the way north to Wells Street, earning him the title, “Father of the West Side”. Plankinton established a series of meat-packing businesses with partners who left their own legacies, including; Frederick Layton, founder of the Layton Art Gallery, now part of the Milwaukee Art Institute; Phillip Danforth Armour, whose meat-packing plant still operates in Chicago; and Patrick Cudahy, Jr., whose started the Patrick Cudahy meat-packing plant in Cudahy, Wisconsin. At one time, his was the fourth largest meatpacking company in the country. In 1864, Plankinton paid taxes on the highest income, $104,100, in the city of Milwaukee. As part of a jest, he built the Plankinton House in 1868, a hotel he lavished with the best furnishings even though it seldom made a profit. Plankinton’s investments in real estate, meatpacking, and also railroads helped him build one the greatest fortunes in Milwaukee in his lifetime.

John Plankinton served on many boards and was a central figure in several Milwaukee civic projects, including building the first public library and providing significant funding for an exhibition center. In 2008, Greg Shutters wrote an article that identified Plankinton as one of a trio of industrialists, “mutually responsible for building Milwaukee from a small town into a thriving metropolis.”

Legacy
The town of Plankinton, South Dakota was named for him in 1883. West Water Street in Milwaukee, one block east of Second Avenue, was renamed Plankinton Avenue in 1929.