Past and Future: Plans for Lake Monona's Waterfront

Madison certainly has not taken advantage of its lakefront the way it could have, but on the other hand things could be worse…and are getting better. This Madison Trust for Historic Preservation architectural talk will look back at the original John Nolen plan from 1911 and the new plan for Lake Monona currently underway. Speaker Anna Cawrse is a landscape architect with the Denver firm working on the current redevelopment. Lynn Bjorkman is vice president of the Madison Trust.

media release: In 1909, a group of three hundred Madisonians met to consider commissioning a comprehensive plan that would guide the future growth and development of Wisconsin’s capitol city. By a unanimous vote, John Nolen, a landscape architect based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and one of America’s leading town planning and civic design professionals, was hired to prepare the plan. That plan, “Madison: A Model City”, included Nolen’s vision of connecting the Capitol to the lake. Though Nolen’s plan was never fully realized, over the years it has remained an inspiration for development of Lake Monona’s waterfront. Now, a new major planning initiative, sponsored by the City of Madison and Friends of Nolen Waterfront, is again drawing Madison’s attention to its downtown lakefront. “Voices of the Lake” is a new master plan for the Lake Monona waterfront, introduced to the public by a design team at Sasaki Associates, Denver office, in 2023. This presentation will focus on John Nolen’s 1911 model city plan and then look at how new voices and ideas have informed the current plan to re-envision the future of Madison’s signature lakefront park.

Speakers

Anna Cawrse, ASLA, PLA, is a landscape architect and Director of Sasaki’s office in Denver, Colorado where she works on and manages complex built projects and master plans across North America -- from large regional parks to small pocket parks within the urban fabric of cities. Anna holds a master's degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and led the design team in the planning process that led to the selection of Sasaki’s proposal for the Lake Monona waterfront master plan, “Voices of the Lake.”

Lynn Bjorkman has worked as a historic preservation planner for the past 30 years, both for municipal government and the National Park Service in Michigan and Nebraska. She has a master’s degree in urban planning from the University of Michigan. Now retired, she maintains an active interest in urban design and planning history. A resident of Madison for the past 25 years, Lynn has served as President of the Madison Trust’s Board of Trustees and is now the Madison Trust’s Vice President.

Learn more about the series on our website.