On a Saturday morning in Brookfield, the parking lot at Sri Gayathri Foods fills with families in search of curry leaves and idli rice, while twelve miles west, off Pewaukee Road, the white spires of a Hindu temple rise above 22 acres of Waukesha County farmland. The Indians in Brookfield, Wisconsin did not arrive in a single wave. They came one engineering offer, one medical residency, one school district report card at a time, and they made this affluent Milwaukee suburb a quiet centre of South Asian life in the upper Midwest.
The Place
Brookfield sits about twelve miles west of downtown Milwaukee, in Waukesha County, just off Interstate 94. It was first settled in 1836, when much of the land was swamp and wetland that early farmers had to drain before they could build. By the 1920s the automobile had turned it into a Milwaukee commuter suburb, and the corporate offices followed.
Today it is a city of roughly 41,000 people with a median household income above $110,000, anchored by the kind of employers that draw skilled professionals from around the world. Fiserv, Kohl’s, Milwaukee Tool and GE HealthCare all have a major presence in or near the city. That last name matters more than any other to this story.
How It Became Indian
There is no single founding moment for the Indian community in Brookfield. There is instead a slow accumulation of arrivals, each drawn by work, schools and the chance to raise children somewhere green and safe.
The early professionals
The first Indians to settle around Milwaukee in meaningful numbers came in the 1960s and 1970s, mostly doctors and engineers admitted under the Hart-Celler Act of 1965, which finally opened American immigration to skilled Asians. They were scattered then, a family here and a family there, with no neighbourhood to call their own.
This was a Midwestern version of a national pattern. The same law that sent Indian families to Brookfield was filling the streets of Edison, New Jersey and, later, the cul-de-sacs of Cupertino, California. Brookfield’s version was simply slower and quieter, shaped by Wisconsin’s particular industries rather than by Silicon Valley or the pharmaceutical corridor.
By the late 1980s the picture was changing fast. In 1997 roughly 1,000 Hindu families lived in Wisconsin, up from about 300 a decade earlier, a jump driven almost entirely by the growth of technology and healthcare employment in the Milwaukee metro.
The GE HealthCare engine
No institution shaped this community more than GE HealthCare, whose main campus sits in nearby Waukesha. The company designs and builds MRI machines, CT scanners and ultrasound systems, work that demands exactly the kind of electrical, software and biomedical engineers that India’s universities produce in large numbers.
For decades, an engineering offer from GE HealthCare has been a common first chapter in a Brookfield family’s American story. The campus is a short drive from the city, and Brookfield’s schools and housing made it the natural place to put down roots once a green card or a promotion made staying permanent.
The doctors and the schools
The other great draw was medicine. The hospitals of greater Milwaukee, from the Medical College of Wisconsin to the suburban Froedtert and Aurora systems, recruited Indian physicians steadily through the 1980s and 1990s. Many chose Brookfield for the same reason American-born colleagues did: the Elmbrook School District.
Elmbrook’s two high schools, Brookfield Central and Brookfield East, rank among the very best public schools in Wisconsin, both placing inside the state’s top ten in recent years. For immigrant parents who measured a town first by its classrooms, that reputation was decisive. It still is.
Word of mouth did the rest. A physician who joined a Milwaukee hospital would tell a cousin still in training, who would tell a classmate working at GE HealthCare, until a single recommendation about the schools had drawn a dozen families to the same few streets. That is how diaspora suburbs grow everywhere, one trusted referral at a time, and Brookfield was no exception.
A community that built its own centre
Before 2000, observant Hindu families in Wisconsin had nowhere local to worship. On a festival day they drove three hours to temples in Aurora or Lemont, in suburban Chicago. That ended in 1995, when about sixty people began planning a temple of their own.
Ground was broken in 1998. The first phase of the Hindu Temple of Wisconsin opened in Pewaukee in 2000, and the completed building was formally inaugurated on 28 June 2002. The temple turned a scattered population into something that felt like a community, with a place to gather, marry and mourn.
The Landmarks
Hindu Temple of Wisconsin, W243 N4063 Pewaukee Road, Pewaukee. Built on 22 acres of former farmland, the temple honours Vishnu as its principal deity while housing shrines to gods from across India, with South Indian deities on the south side of the main hall and North Indian ones on the north. A Jain temple shares the same property, and an $8,000 square foot expansion in 2016 made room for the crowds that come on festival days.
Sri Gayathri Foods, 19035 W Bluemound Road, Brookfield. A South Indian grocery that has become a weekend ritual for families across Waukesha County. The shelves run to lentils, flours, spices, snacks and the curry leaves and idli rice that are hard to find anywhere else this side of Chicago.
Zaika Mart & Grill, W Capitol Drive, Brookfield. An Indian and Pakistani restaurant and market under one roof, the kind of place where a family can pick up groceries and stay for biryani. It reflects how closely the region’s Indian and Pakistani communities live and eat alongside one another.
The Corners of Brookfield, 20111 W Bluemound Road, Brookfield. A 750,000 square foot lifestyle centre built to feel like a European town square, anchored by Von Maur. It is where Brookfield’s professional families, Indian and otherwise, shop, eat and run into their neighbours on a Sunday afternoon.
Brookfield Central High School, 16900 W Gebhardt Road, Brookfield. One of the top public high schools in Wisconsin, with an Asian student body of around 20 percent, the highest of any school in the district. For a generation of Indian families, its results page was the reason they chose this town over any other.
Indian Groceries & Spices, 10701 W North Avenue, Milwaukee. One of the older South Asian grocers in the metro, just east of Brookfield, that served the community before the suburb had stores of its own. It is a reminder that the Brookfield community grew out of a wider Milwaukee one.
Brookfield Square, 95 N Moorland Road, Brookfield. The city’s original 1967 shopping mall at Bluemound and Moorland, near I-94. More than a century of suburban commercial life runs through this corner, and for new arrivals it has long been the first map reference they learn.
Where They Came From
Brookfield’s Indian families trace back to many corners of the subcontinent, but two streams stand out. The first is the South Indian engineering and IT migration, families with roots in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Karnataka, drawn by the technical work at GE HealthCare and the region’s other employers. Sri Gayathri Foods, a South Indian specialist, is the clearest sign of their numbers.
The second stream is the North Indian medical and professional migration, families from Gujarat, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra who came for residencies, hospital posts and corporate careers. The Hindu Temple’s deliberate layout, with northern and southern deities given equal place, is a quiet acknowledgement that both Indias settled here together.
Brookfield Today
Asian residents now make up about 11 percent of Brookfield’s population, and Indians are the largest part of that share. The clearest measure is in the schools: Brookfield Central is roughly one fifth Asian, and across the Elmbrook district nearly 15 percent of students are Asian or Pacific Islander. These are the children of the engineers and doctors who arrived a generation ago.
The pattern is generational now. The first arrivals came as young professionals with visas and a single suitcase of expectations. Their children grew up speaking Wisconsin English, playing in Elmbrook orchestras and on Brookfield soccer fields, and many have stayed in the metro to raise a third generation. The community is no longer a foothold. It is a home.
The community’s life now extends well beyond the temple and the grocery aisle. The Milwaukee Premier League, founded in 2006 and the largest cricket league in Wisconsin, fields sixteen teams made up largely of players from the Indian subcontinent. In late summer, India Fest Milwaukee, launched in 2013, fills downtown festival grounds with Bollywood music, classical dance and food stalls. In autumn, Diwali celebrations light up venues across the metro.
Brookfield is not a Devon Avenue or a Jackson Heights, with shop signs in Hindi and Tamil down every block. It is something quieter and, in its way, more telling: an affluent American suburb that a community of Indian professionals chose, school by school and job by job, and slowly made partly their own. The families here have built much the same life as Indian communities in Naperville, Illinois and Troy, Michigan, other Midwestern suburbs where good schools and corporate careers drew them in.
Frequently Asked Questions
How many Indians live in Brookfield, Wisconsin?
Asian residents make up about 11 percent of Brookfield’s roughly 41,000 people, and Indians are the largest single group within that. Waukesha County as a whole is home to nearly 8,000 Indian residents, the third largest county total in Wisconsin.
Why did so many Indians settle in Brookfield?
The Indians in Brookfield, Wisconsin came largely for work and schools. GE HealthCare’s engineering campus in nearby Waukesha and the hospitals of greater Milwaukee drew Indian engineers and doctors, who then chose Brookfield for the top-ranked Elmbrook School District.
Where is the nearest Hindu temple to Brookfield?
The Hindu Temple of Wisconsin sits on 22 acres at W243 N4063 Pewaukee Road in Pewaukee, a short drive west of Brookfield. It opened in 2000 and was formally inaugurated in 2002, and it serves Hindu families from across the state.
Where can you buy Indian groceries in Brookfield?
Sri Gayathri Foods at 19035 W Bluemound Road is a South Indian grocery popular across Waukesha County, and Zaika Mart & Grill on W Capitol Drive combines an Indian and Pakistani market with a restaurant. Older stores in Milwaukee, such as Indian Groceries & Spices on W North Avenue, served the community before the suburb had its own.
What are the best schools for Indian families in Brookfield?
The Elmbrook School District is the main draw, and its two high schools, Brookfield Central and Brookfield East, rank among the best public schools in Wisconsin. Brookfield Central has the highest Asian enrolment in the district, around 20 percent.
Do Indians in Brookfield play cricket?
Yes. The Milwaukee Premier League, founded in 2006, is the largest cricket league in Wisconsin, with sixteen teams made up mostly of players from the Indian subcontinent, including many from Brookfield and the surrounding suburbs.
If your family’s story passed through Brookfield, or any of the places Indians have made home in America, Atlas of Home can trace that journey. From a village in Tamil Nadu or a city in Gujarat, to a first apartment near the GE HealthCare campus, to a house in the Elmbrook district, to wherever you are now.