Picture Captain Frederick Pabst, born in 1836 and gone by 1904, raising this grand Flemish Revival-styled mansion in Milwaukee in 1892. He immigrated in 1848 as a 12-year-old from Thuringia, Germany, worked his way up on Goodrich Line steamships from cabin boy to captain in 1857, and in 1862 married Maria Best, daughter of the owner of Best and Company. Pabst joined the family brewing business in 1864; by 1874 Best & Co. was the largest brewery in the U.S., and in 1889 it was renamed the Pabst Brewing Company.
Around 1890 Captain Pabst commissioned Milwaukee architect George Bowman Ferry to design this Flemish Revival home; a building permit was issued June 27, 1890, and the house took two years to build. In 1975 the mansion was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, and it is now a historic house museum offering tours to the public. Two years of building went into this Flemish Revival house after that June 1890 permit, and today its doors open to the public as a historic house museum.