Roman Kwasniewski
Roman B.J. Kwasniewski was born June 10, 1886 in Chicago, Illinois to Jozef and Wanda (Dyniewicz) Kwasniewski. The family moved to Milwaukee in the 1890s. Roman was educated at Milwaukee public schools until he was ten years old. He attended St. Hyacinth’s parochial school (1898-1900), South Division High School (1900-1904), and Marquette University (1926-1928). In 1913, he opened Park Studio at 1024 West Lincoln Avenue; he closed the business in the mid-1940s. Kwasniewski married Mary Drozniakiewicz, and the couple had three children: Edward, Adele, and Roman. Roman B.J. Kwasniewski passed away in May 1980.
Roman Kwasniewski Photographs
From his studio on Lincoln Avenue, Roman Kwasniewski captured important events in the lives of thousands of Polish-Americans: First Communions, Confirmations, graduations, weddings, and anniversaries. He was widely regarded as his community’s premiere photographer. In addition to his commercial portrait work, Kwasniewski took thousands of pictures of the community in which he lived. His photos show Milwaukee’s Polish-American community during its most cohesive period. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries acquired the physical collection in February 1979 with the assistance of Polanki, the Polish Women’s Club of Milwaukee, and Kwasniewski’s daughter, Adele, and her husband, John Kaczmarowski. It includes over 29,000 negatives, 6,000 prints, as well as lantern slides, photographic postcards, and business documents. It was opened for research in May 1991.
Milwaukee Polonia Digital Collection
The scope of the Milwaukee Polonia digital collection includes all negatives and prints not matched to negatives. The project – from digitization to metadata description and finally, to website development – began in August 2012 and ended in June 2014. All 5×7 and 4×5 glass negatives were digitally captured using a Nikon D800 camera and an innovative “rail system.” (See Digitizing Milwaukee’s Polonia: the Digital Assembly Line.) TIFF images were captured as greyscale at a resolution of 600-900 dpi. Other size glass negatives, lantern slides, and photographic postcards and prints were imaged on a flatbed scanner. Kwasniewski sometimes wrote a job number or name in the margin of a glass negative on the emulsion side. Although this information would have cropped out when he printed the image, we have retained it in the digital collection. However, it appears in reverse because this is the way he would have printed the image. Metadata was largely taken from an in-house database created by archivists when the physical collection was processed in the early 1990s. Digitization project staff created additional metadata for the most frequently consulted images in the collection (about 20%). The collection was officially opened at Polish Fest in Milwaukee on June 13, 2014.
In 2015, the Polish American Congress–Wisconsin Division recognized the Milwaukee Polonia digital collection with its prestigious Congressman Clement J. Zablocki “Civic Achievement Award.”
Project Team Members
| Michael Doylen | Assistant Director of Libraries |
| Angella Flatt | Graduate Student |
| Allyse Freeman | Graduate Student |
| Tracy Garvens | Graduate Student |
| Anne Gaynor | Project Coordinator |
| Ann Hanlon | Head of Digital Collections & Initiatives |
| Anastasia Hanson | Graduate Student |
| Dan Hauck | Project Archivist |
| Nathan Humpal | Catalog and Metadata Librarian |
| Molly Kahn | Project Coordinator |
| Elisabeth Kaune | Graduate Student |
| Catherine Loomis | Library Services Assistant |
| Jim Lowrey | Assistant Director of Libraries |
| Ling Meng | Digitization Librarian |
| Charles Tonelli | Graduate Student |
Funders
| Gary Barczak |
| Jerome Barczak |
| Maxine Barczak Rappaport |
| Ewa Barczyk |
| Zofia and Victor Barczyk |
| Ada Dziewanowska |
| Mike Fojut |
| Teresa and Wieslaw Frankowski |
| Luz and Raul Hernandez |
| Kris Gerke Komes |
| Nancy and Dennis Jaeger, in memory of the Paradowski and Fabiszak families |
| Steve Janiszewski |
| Kris Jarantoski |
| Eugene L. Kaluzny |
| Jadwiga Krol |
| Thomas Krukowski |
| Maryann and Christopher Marowski |
| Susan Modder |
| Eileen K. Panacek |
| Donald E. Pienkos |
| Anita and Robert Pietrykowski |
| Helena Pycior |
| Thomas Radoszewski |
| Bianca H. Rogozinski |
| Irene and Barry Riggs, in memory of William Kowalkowski |
| Susan and Anthony Smyczek |
| Christine Vollmer |
| Michael Wabiszewski |
| Mary and Francis Wisielewski |
| Arlene Wroblewski |
| Dr. Nathaniel Zelazo |
| Henryka Ziolkowski |
| Boswell Book Company |
| Friends of the Golda Meir Library |
| The Herzfeld Foundation |
| Polanki: The Polish Women’s Cultural Club of Milwaukee |
Faculty Advisors
| Jasmine Alinder | Associate Professor, History |
| Rachel Buff | Associate Professor, History |
| Michael Gordon | Associate Professor Emeritus, History |
| Gregory Jay | Professor, English |
| Neal Pease | Professor, History |
| Donald Pienkos | Professor Emeritus, Political Science |
| Amanda Seligman | Associate Professor, History |