Schlitz on the Beach: How a Milwaukee Brewing Empire Found Paradise in Naples, Florida

Every winter I watch the same beautiful migration. Whitefish Bay to Port Royal. Mequon to Pelican Bay. Shorewood to Old Naples. My Wisconsin clients fold up the cashmere, pack the linen, and point the car toward the Gulf.

Most of them think they are part of something new.

They are not. They are following the Uihlein's legacy.

Naples began as a Kentucky dream. In the 1880s, Louisville newspaper publisher Walter Haldeman and Senator John Stuart Williams sailed this coast, fell for the bay, and built a hotel and a pier. For decades the town stayed a quiet winter hideaway for a few families from Kentucky and Ohio. There were no good roads. The train did not arrive until 1927.

It was beautiful. It was remote. And it was waiting for a builder.

If you grew up in Milwaukee, you know the line: the beer that made Milwaukee famous. The Uihlein brothers, nephews of brewery founder August Krug, took the Joseph Schlitz Brewing Company from a Milwaukee brewery to one of the best known beers in the world.

William Benedict Uihlein was the son of one of those brothers, Alfred. He retired from Schlitz in 1936, and he and his wife, Melitta, went looking for a place to escape the Milwaukee cold.

Sound familiar?

In 1937, at 57 years old, William bought more than four acres of Naples beachfront on what would become Gordon Drive in Port Royal. He built a winter home on a true Milwaukee scale: nine bedrooms, twelve baths, a five car garage, a guest house, and staff quarters.

A Milwaukee mansion, transplanted to the Gulf.

This is the part of the story that moves me. William Uihlein did not simply winter in Naples. He built it.

Great beer is water science, and early Naples had notoriously poor water. Local historian Lila Zuck wrote about how it stained whatever it touched. So in 1945, William chaired the Naples Water Committee and used the purification expertise he had learned at Schlitz to design and build the town's first water plant. Then he loaned the town $8,500 to improve it.

That was not his only investment:

• 1940: He loaned town leaders $1,500 toward the first Naples Town Hall on Eighth Street South, just a few blocks from our office on Fifth Avenue South.
• 1946: The town council named him honorary mayor for life.
• 1947: He helped design the Naples Plan, a campaign to raise $300,000 in private donations for projects including Cambier Park and the town's first road paving program.

He even loaned his boat to Gary Cooper for the Everglades filming of Distant Drums, a year before he passed away in 1952.A Milwaukee businessman gave Naples its water, its parks, and its paved streets. I think about that every time I walk Fifth Avenue South.

The Uihlein name never left the Gulf Coast of Florida.

The Gordon Drive estate. Decades after the family sold William's beach home, that property made history in 2018 with a $48.8 million sale, recorded at the time as the largest residential sale in Collier County. I have sold 68 Gilded Age - 12 of them twice-mansions in Milwaukee, and I can tell you this is no coincidence. Pedigree holds value. Great land, great architecture, and a great story never go out of style.

Lakewood Ranch. Up the coast, another branch of the family owns Schroeder-Manatee Ranch, the company behind Lakewood Ranch and the Sarasota Polo Club.

Uline. William's great-nephew, Dick Uihlein, and his wife, Liz, built the Uline shipping supply company. Uline opened its first Florida distribution center in Collier County in 2023, nearly a century after William first chose Naples.

Generation after generation, Milwaukee keeps building Naples.

My own family found this coast the way so many Wisconsin families do. We discovered Marco Island in 2010 and spent a decade of Christmases and Easters on the Gulf. In 2022, I bought my first Florida home in Fiddler's Creek.

And then my clients started asking. Then they started begging. Suzanne, will you be our Florida broker?

That is why Powers Realty Group, Inc. opened our Naples office at 780 Fifth Avenue South. Not on a hunch. Because the families who trusted us with their homes in Shorewood, Whitefish Bay, Fox Point and Mequon wanted that same care on the Gulf.

When I tell the story of Milwaukee's great homes I am telling the story of the builders who made Milwaukee great. William Uihlein reminds that Milwaukee builders went south, and they built something extraordinary in Naples, Florida.

Our clients are the next chapter in Naples history.

Turns out, a historic estate on Milwaukee's North Shore and a Gulf front home in Port Royal, have a lot in common. Until, I listed the coach house at the Uihlein Mansion on Milwaukee's East Side I had no idea how influential Milwaukee was in building Naples, Florida.

So there you have it, It all makes sense now why we grew Naples from Milwaukee. We would love to help you in either location. We are following in the legacy of those who came before us. 

Suzanne Powers
CEO, Founder and Broker-Owner, Powers Realty Group, Inc.
Milwaukee's Luxury Leader | Wisconsin's #1 Boutique Broker™
Shorewood: 4214 N Oakland Avenue | 414-963-0000 | powersrealty.com
Naples: 780 Fifth Avenue South | powersrealtyfl.com