If we'd lived in 1856, what would we see?
Where did our 6,864 residents work and live in the year that we incorporated as a city?
As we celebrate our sesquicentennial, let's create a time machine from surviving historic sites. They're not all downtown, and they're not that plentiful. "I think Madison has fewer [pioneer-era structures] than most cities," says city of Madison preservation planner Katherine Rankin. "That has to do, probably, with the fact that we live on an isthmus. We had significant redevelopment at the turn of the last century, when there was a big boom in our population. Then a lot more in the 1920s, and then a lot more after World War II. From the 1920s to the 1970s, progress was the word."
Our search for sesquicentennial sites won't be easy. Many areas of the city that look old just aren't. For example, the Langdon Street neighborhood, between the UW Memorial Union and the Edgewater Hotel, seems historic, but the area was extensively redeveloped in the 1920s; revival architectural styles fool the eye. The Mansion Hill neighborhood, to the east, remains a bona fide showcase, consisting of homes for the rich.
But for our tour of 1856 we want a variety of structures, commercial and residential, worker and wealthy. Most will necessarily be durable stone or brick, and they're far apart, just as many homes in the city were then.
In those days, people built right up to the road. It wasn't because small-town Madison was friendlier or otherwise bucolic. "Front yards were not too useful because there were a lot of wandering pigs," Rankin notes. During our tour we'll just have to imagine those pigs, as well as the horse and human excrement dumped into the muddy roads.
So here we go. Let's walk the board sidewalks, listening for the church bells that are the only way we have to set time in 1856.
Grace Episcopal Church
6 N. Carroll St.
Once there were four churches on the Square; now there's just one, and it's the oldest building there. Grace Episcopal was built from 1855 to 1858 in a Gothic Revival style. Its Guild Hall, on West Washington Avenue, was added in the 1890s, as was the baptistry window designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany.
Bowen/Bartlett House
114-116 W. Gorham St.
This brick Greek Revival house was built in 1853 for Dr. James Bowen, who served as mayor in 1871. His medical partner, Dr. Edward Bartlett, later lived there, but its best-known resident, from 1865 to 1873, was James Moseley, founder of the namesake Madison book and stationery store that lasted 140 years. Its Hilldale Shopping Center location closed in 1998.
White House
114 W. Gilman St.
In his student days, naturalist John Muir was a frequent guest in this striking, native sandstone house, built in 1856 by Julius White, and later home to Prof. Ezra Carr, who sparked the Scottish youth's interest in botany. Muir recalled Carr's rooms as "filled with books, peace, kindliness, and patience."
Corner of East Gilman and North Pinckney Streets
All four buildings at this intersection date to the 1850s. The Italianate home at 104 E. Gilman St. was built in 1855 by John Kendall. The house's mansard roof was added later, like that of its German Romanesque Revival neighbor, the Keenan House, at 28 E. Gilman, built in 1857. The Bashford House, 423 N. Pinckney St., was built in 1855, and for many years was home to implement dealer Morris Fuller, who contracted during the Civil War to provide Union troops with 6,000 horses. The Mansion Hill Inn, 424 N. Pinckney St., was built from 1857 to 1858 as a home for Alexander McDonnell, a contractor for the second Madison capitol (today's is the third). The inn and vanished capitol had the same architects, building materials and decorative details.
Governor's Residence
130 E. Gilman St.
Seventeen Wisconsin governors lived here, from 1885 to 1950. It was built in 1856 from local sandstone, in the Italianate style that would become extremely popular on the UW campus. Today it serves as the university's Knapp Memorial Graduate Center.
Argus-Heilmann Building
121-123 E. Main St.
Probably the oldest commercial property remaining in the city. The original portion of the building was erected in 1847 for the MadisonArgus newspaper. Today's Argus Food and Spirits preserves the newspaper's name.
Hyer-Jaquish Hotel
854 Jenifer St.
Madison's oldest surviving hotel was built in 1854 by David Hyer, who came to Madison to help build the city's first capitol. It served as a hotel until 1874, when fire destroyed the original, larger rear wing.
Old Spring Tavern
3706 Nakoma Rd.
Out in the country when it was built in 1854, the Old Spring Tavern served as an inn for travelers between Portage and Milwaukee for three and a half decades. The Greek Revival tavern is built of bricks made of clay dug from the slope behind. The two-story veranda was added in the 1920s.
Dunning House
2212-2216 St. Paul Ave.
This may be the oldest surviving house in the city. The easternmost section was built by Philo and Sophia Dunning in 1849. Philo Dunning's many jobs included sawmill operator, grocer, druggist, county treasurer and state representative. For 25 years he lived in their "neat and comfortable house," according to an early history, "and would have still resided there but for the implacable locomotive, which insisted upon sweeping with its defiant scream in front of his very door."
Hastie House
403 N. Brearly St.
One of the very few early wood-frame buildings remaining, and originally one of the farthest from the Square. It was built in 1854 for house painter Robert Hastie. Several additions were later made. Joseph Schubert, mayor from 1900 to 1912, grew up here.
North Hall
Bascom Hill
Welcome to the University of Wisconsin in 1851 — all of it. North Hall was dorm, lecture hall, museum and library, all in one. Its near twin, South Hall, across Bascom Hill, was built in 1855. North Hall was where naturalist John Muir lived and studied as a UW student. "I was far from satisfied with what I learned, and should have stayed longer," he wrote in The Story of My Boyhood and Youth. Originally a large Indian effigy mound, in the shape of a panther, stood nearby; it was destroyed when Bascom Hall was built.
The Indian Mounds
Let's not forget Madison's first residents. The Indian mounds are actually the oldest remaining Madison structures. "In the entire United States there is not a city that has in its environs so large a number of prehistoric Indian earthworks as has the city of Madison," wrote Charles Brown, director of the Wisconsin Historical Society, in 1922. If a sesquicentennial gets you excited, know that some of the mounds were created as many as 2,800 years ago. They can be viewed in natural areas citywide, with notable examples on the Edgewood College campus, Mendota State Hospital, Forest Hill Cemetery and the UW Arboretum.