Wauwatosa is Tosa to everyone who lives there, and the historic Village along the Menomonee River is its center. Narrow streets, old buildings, independent shops and restaurants, and a farmers market that takes over the whole thing on a Saturday morning.
State Street and North Avenue carry most of the city's dining, and Hart Park handles the rest of civic life with the pool, the fields, and summer concerts at the Muellner Building. Hoyt Park's beer garden by the river is a Tosa institution in its own right.
The Milwaukee Regional Medical Center campus sits on the west side and employs an enormous number of people, which gives Tosa a population of clinicians working rotating and overnight shifts. It shapes the city more than visitors realize.
Mayfair covers the shopping, Wauwatosa East and West cover the Friday nights, and the whole thing stays walkable and proud of itself. It is one of the best-liked communities in the metro for good reason. The tradeoff is that everything in Tosa is busy, parking included, which is exactly why a twenty-minute drive west for an appointment that starts on time is an easy trade to make.
Tosa is older than Milwaukee's annexation of everything around it, founded in the 1830s along the Menomonee, and the Village still shows it. Roughly 48,000 people now, with a housing stock that runs from 1890s farmhouses to mid-century ranches to new infill, often on the same block.
