Built in 1881 by James Vincent de Paul Lafferty Jr, Lucy the Elephant was intended to attract buyers to the building lots Lafferty was offering for sale in the area. It's reported to have cost $25,000 to construct. After falling into financial trouble, Lafferty sold the Elephant and other property to Anton Gertzen in 1887. Lucy is 6 stories tall, weighs 90 tons, and is covered with 12,000 square feet of sheet tin.

In 1902 an English doctor and his family leased the Elephant as a summer home. They moved into Lucy's ample interior and converted the main hall into four bedrooms, a dining room, kitchen and parlor. A bathroom was outfitted in one of the small front shoulder closets using a miniature bathtub.

Part of the complex erected for the Milwaukee Water Works over one hundred years ago, the lofty Victorian Gothic Water Tower stands on a bluff overlooking Lake Michigan and encloses an iron standpipe that originally served to relieve city water mains of pulsations from pumping engines housed in the lake-front pumping station. Modern equipment has made the facility unnecessary, but tower and standpipe have remained, little altered through the years. Long a notable feature of the city's skyline and often praised for its beauty, the Water Tower has been accorded official landmark status by the Milwaukee Landmarks Commission and the American Water Works Association.

Work on the foundation had begun by May, 1873; and on September 14, 1874, the tower was put in service, though work continued through the end of that year. Total cost of the tower, including the standpipe, was $53,017.93.

The building was built for circus training. The first two floors were used as living quarters for the Satterly (or Satterlee) family while the third floor was used as a training area for acrobats. A rope was lowered by a man standing in the cupola which was then attached to the learning acrobat. This contraption was called a mechanic strap and prevented the acrobatic student from falling to the hard floor below.

Before barns were completed behind the house, animals were kept in the cellar, where there was a training ring. A block and tackle was rigged to the covering over the outside cellar entrance which allowed larger animals to be lowered; there are no outside stairs into the cellar.