Location
Photo Gallery
The B. C. Raddant Millinery at 144 S. Main Street in Shawano.
Bertha Raddant in her millinery shop.
B. C. Raddant Millinery advertisement from the early 1900’s.
The Raddant Millinery building when Hal’s Halmark called it home.
The remodeled B. C. Raddant building in 2025.
The remodeled B. C. Raddant building in 2025.
A Brief History
Raddant Millinery
144 South Main Street
Shawano, Wisconsin
In the late 1800’s, during the early days of Shawano, there were few businesses in downtown Shawano that were owned and operated by women. One of those was Bertha C. Raddant who owned the B.C. Raddant Millinery at 144 S. Main St.
We like to think that the women today that have businesses and are owners of shops on Main Street owe a little bit to Bertha who paved the way.
Bertha started her business in the late 1880’s when women’s hats and accessories were all the rage! If you were a woman living in Shawano County, the place to go for your hats was Raddant Millinery which specialized in ladies’ hats.
Bertha Raddant owned and operated the millinery shop at 144 S. Main Street from the 1880’s until her death in 1911.
Bertha was very close to her niece, Matilda Raddant, who became her apprentice in the business. Bertha and Matilda often traveled to Chicago to buy inventory for the millinery store. Matilda Raddant Fink continued to run the shop after Bertha’s death.
As the B.C. Raddant Millinery had become a successful business Bertha was an active member of the German Lutheran church and took much interest in church work. In 1907 Bertha was president of the Ladies Aide Society.
In 1905 the Upham & Russell Company started construction of a building to the north of Berth’s business. The Citizens State Bank building, now owned by Heather and Dave Pahl of Martin Jewelers, was built to the south of her business in 1910. Bertha and her brother Emil, of the Raddant Brewery, were both recorded as stockholders in the Citizen’s State Bank with 300 shares. In 1906 Emil and his wife Minnie sold their brewery business and holdings and moved from Shawano.
In the 1920’s, the demand for millinery declined and Matilda and Charles sold the building in 1924 for $10,000 to the Schultz Brothers Company. Matilda worked as a clerk in the store. The family later moved to a home located at 401 W. Green Bay Street.
The B.C. Raddant Millinery located at 144 S. Main Street is part of the Shawano Main Street Historic District and the property has received a Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory Citation from the Wisconsin Historical Society. The store interior has been completely restored by the present owner.
Hal’s Hallmark called the building home for many years with Heinz Drug store before that.
From the 1999 National Register of Historic Places Registration application:
This building’s odd, off-center facade stems from the fact that it is a pre-1894 wood frame building veneered between 1901 and 1907. The facade has a simple, brick, corbeled cornice, a single band of decorative, vine-like terra cotta inlay across the upper reaches of the facade, and a set of four evenly-spaced, slightly protruding blocks above the second floor, which appear to be anchors for the wall’s veneer. The building’s three second-story windows each have stone lintels that extend slightly beyond the window space; the panes themselves are not original but from the historic period, and are protected by external storm units. Each window is accompanied by non-historic shutters and window boxes. There is no evidence of a historic storefront cornice; the historic absence of this feature may stem from its early construction or its historic veneer. The storefront is entirely altered.