Fox Point Is Marking Two Different Anniversaries This Month, and They're Not on the Same Calendar

Ask anyone in Fox Point what year it is and you'll get the same answer: the Village turns 100 in 2026, a number the Village has built an entire centennial calendar around, complete with historical bus tours and a commemorative book. Ask the Fox Point Foundation, the nonprofit that runs the Rock the Fox concert series, and you'll hear a different number. This year is the Foundation's 50th, an anniversary that has nothing to do with when the Village was founded and everything to do with when a group of neighbors decided the community needed summer concerts.

That distinction sounds like trivia. It isn't. It explains why the final stretch of what's being called Fox Point's biggest celebration year is actually landing as two separate sendoffs, staged two weeks apart, by two organizations that share a name but not a shared history. If you've been following just one events page this fall, there's a decent chance you've already missed something.

Two Organizations, Two Numbers

The Village government's centennial framing goes back to 1926, the year Fox Point incorporated, and its official events page describes 2026 as a chance to "commemorate our special history and celebrate a bright future ahead." That page has organized bus tours through the village's historic sites and coordinated with local schools around the 100th day observance.

The Fox Point Foundation is a separate entity entirely. It's the group that has staged the Rock the Fox concert series at Longacre Pavilion for half a century, and its own events page labels 2026 as its 50th anniversary year, independent of anything the Village is doing. The overlap in timing is a coincidence of two different founding dates, not a joint production.

For a resident trying to catch the last of both calendars before the weather turns, here's what's actually left on the books this month:

• September 12: The Village's beer garden, run in partnership with New Barons Brewing Cooperative, returns to Longacre Pavilion, 2 to 7 p.m. This is a Village program, not a Foundation one, and it runs most summers regardless of anniversary years.
• September 19: The 50th Anniversary Rock the Fox finale, 6:30 to 9 p.m., featuring the band AM FM playing what the Foundation's own site calls "the history of rock." Free Wisconsin Athletic Club classes run from 5:45 to 6:30 p.m. beforehand, no registration required.
• September 26 and October 3: The final two Saturday dates for the Village's beer garden at Longacre Pavilion before the season wraps.

None of those are centennial-specific programming. The beer garden belongs to the Village, an arrangement with New Barons that predates the anniversary year entirely. The Rock the Fox finale belongs to the Foundation, marking a fiftieth that has nothing to do with the Village's hundredth.

What's Actually Happening at the Chipstone Foundation

The Village's own centennial finale is a separate event entirely, and it happened at a location most Fox Point residents don't get inside on a normal weekend. On September 5, the Chipstone Foundation opened its grounds at 7820 N. Club Circle for a free showcase billed as the last fall event of the Village's centennial year. Visitors could tour the landscaped grounds, walk through the Carriage House art gallery, play croquet on the lawn, and pack a picnic for an old-fashioned garden-party afternoon.

There was no parking on site or along Club Circle. The Village ran a complimentary shuttle from Longacre Pavilion, the same building that hosts the beer garden and Rock the Fox, running from 10:15 a.m. to 3 p.m. for anyone who didn't want to walk or bike in.

The centerpiece of the day was the release of a new book, "Discover Fox Point," written for the centennial. Author Douglas H. Frazer was on hand to sign copies while supplies lasted, alongside historical displays covering the village's first hundred years. It's the kind of access that doesn't repeat on a normal schedule. Chipstone's grounds aren't a public park, and the Village's own centennial materials treated this showcase as the closing chapter of its yearlong program, not a recurring fixture.

Why the Overlap Isn't a Coincidence Worth Reading Into

It would be easy to assume the Village and the Foundation coordinated a single, unified centennial season. They didn't, at least not in any way either organization has documented. The Village's numbers trace back to 1926. The Foundation's trace back to whenever it organized decades later, a fact its own events page states plainly by labeling 2026 as its 50th, not its 100th. Two different clocks, started at two different points, happen to hit round numbers in the same calendar year.

That matters practically because it means there isn't one master list. The Village's own calendar covers the historical programming, the bus tours, the Chipstone showcase, the book, alongside its beer garden partnership with New Barons. The Foundation's page covers only its own concert series. A resident who bookmarks just one of the two will see half the picture and assume that's the whole celebration.

One more thing worth knowing if you're planning to walk any of this rather than drive it: the gravel pedestrian path that descends the bluff from Fox Lane to Beach Drive remains closed while the Village works through stabilization on the slope. If your version of marking the centennial includes a walk down to the water, that particular route isn't the way to do it right now. Longacre Pavilion and the shoreline access points further along Beach Drive remain the more reliable path to the lake this fall.

Catching the Rest of It

Fox Point isn't short on ways to mark a hundred years. It has two separate ones running at once, staged by two organizations that happen to be aging into round numbers in the same twelve months. The Village's centennial finale at Chipstone already came and went on September 5. What's left splits between the two organizers: three more Village beer garden Saturdays, on September 12, 26, and October 3, and the Foundation's 50th-anniversary concert on September 19, all sharing the same lawn at Longacre Pavilion without sharing an organizer.

If you want to catch both threads of this particular year, it takes checking both calendars rather than one. That's not a criticism of either organization. It's just how two milestones that started in different decades happen to land.

Whether you've watched this community add a hundred candles from a house you've owned for years, or you're the kind of person who tracks a neighborhood's rhythms before deciding whether it's home, Isaac Beckley knows this stretch of the North Shore well enough to talk through what a year like this one actually says about a place. Let's Connect when the time is right.