Kenosha is about the size of Evanston and shares certain characteristics: it has a scenic and inviting lakefront, a couple of colleges, and a long and winding Sheridan Road. It’s a 75-to-90-minute drive from downtown Chicago–a straight run up I-94, exiting at either highway 50 (which is 75th Street in Kenosha) or 158 (which is 52nd Street), and many come here to shop, lured by the powerful scent of real and imagined bargains. Just off I-94, about three miles apart, sit two factory outlet malls, which together house well over 100 individual manufacturers’ outlet stores: major brand-name items, mostly clothing but also luggage, athletic shoes, gifts, and linen, can all be had at reasonable (and sometimes excellent) savings. It’s probably foolish, and maybe impossible, to visit Kenosha and not engage (however briefly) in this form of consumer one-upmanship. The area also features a good share of antique stores, although I can’t vouch for the bargains to be found within.
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Kenosha’s other main attraction is its park system and nature preserves. Petrifying Springs Park, located at the north end of town, includes a number of recreational facilities: golf course, volleyball court, picnic tables and grills, and a few nature trails. It also contains a nine-mile cross-country skiing trail; not far from there is the University of Wisconsin-Parkside campus, where you’ll find five ski trails ranging from 2 to 9.3 miles. It costs $4 per vehicle to enter Petrifying Springs; information on the park is available from the county parks department at 414-552-8500.More impressive is the labyrinth of nature trails found at Hawthorn Hollow (414-552-8196), less than a mile from Petrifying Springs at 880 Green Bay Road: a series of hike paths that wind through high forest, low woodlands, and two varieties of prairie, and past two historic buildings that date from the mid-1800s. The Hollow, 40 acres in all, also features a ten-acre arboretum, and is open every day from 8 to 5; admission is free.
A small but well-stocked arboretum is among the distinguishing features of Kemper Center (414-657-6005), parkland and a cluster of 19th-century buildings that were once the campus of an Episcopal girls’ school–that and a breathtaking stretch of peaceful lakeshore interrupted only by a small fishing pier. The center, at 6501 Third Ave., belongs to the Third Avenue Historic District, where you’ll find some two dozen historically noteworthy buildings, including many mansions that were built and occupied by wealthy early-20th-century Kenoshans. One of them, directly across the street from Kemper Center, is the house of James T. Wilson, two and a half stories of French Renaissance Revival architecture built in 1928 for Wilson by the chairman of the board of the Nash Motor Company (which was based in Kenosha). Painstakingly restored over the last few years, it is now known as the Manor House, a spectacular bed and breakfast with large, well-manicured grounds out back. The Manor House, at 6536 Third Ave. (414-658-0014), with its stone floors covered by tapestrylike rugs, its huge common rooms, and its spectacular materials and furnishings, is like a scaled-down San Simeon; it offers four rooms that are really closer to suites, with private baths, anterooms, cable TV, and mesmerizing views of the lake across the street. For this luxury, you pay through the nose–rooms range from $80 to $110–but you sleep like a king (or at least like a long dead industrialist).
Other nightlife spots appeal to different variations on the theme. At Polo’s, located in the harborside Holiday Inn (5125 6th Ave.), the scene is “contemporary”–that is, urgent, loud, strobe-lit, and dance-mixed–and on weekend nights crowded to the gills with mostly young Kenoshans blowing off steam. In contrast, there’s Pepper’s on the north side (12th Street and 22nd Avenue), where the first floor presents a roadhouse restaurant setting; one floor down, in a room that resembles a mostly finished suburban basement that’s lousy with sequential ceiling lights and even a mirrored ball, casually dressed couples dance to 50s and 60s music played by a live band.
