Peter Borkowski
The city of Madison has over 130 neighborhood associations and even more neighborhoods. Their names run the gamut from the poetic (Rocky Bluff) to the historic (Radio Park) to the fairly awkward (VanChaMasShe — that stands for Van Hise Avenue, Chamberlain Avenue, Mason Street and Shepard Terrace on the near west side and is not going to give SoHo a run for its money).
But when it comes to Madisonians’ mental maps of the city, their imaginations head to the four points of the compass, north, east, south and west, with downtown anchoring it all. You may hear people micro-splitting the sides (the so-called far southwest side, the southeast side), these parsings are ill-defined and best avoided.
But change has arrived. Downtown is becoming more of a real city with the addition of high rise condos and apartments. Verona is newly wine-bar-ish. On the east side, big-box commerce has shifted from East Towne to the east side of Interstate 39-90-94, filling in the remaining farmland between Madison and Sun Prairie.
For the uninitiated, the detail-obsessed and the eternally inquisitive, here’s our guide to the ins-and-outs of what’s where in Madison, Wisconsin.
Carolyn Fath
James Madison Park located in Mansion Hill; 614 E. Gorham St.
In the last half-decade, downtown has been changing. Cranes seem never to disappear from the skyline as more high-rise, multi-unit dwellings are built. Smaller neighborhoods like the First Settlement district and Mansion Hill are still home to single-family dwellings and two- and three-flats divided into apartments, but the center of gravity is shifting.
East Washington Avenue Corridor
Ten years ago, this area was dominated by an empty car lot and a shuttered paint factory. Now apartments and condos with sky’s-the-limit names like The Constellation, The Galaxy and The Lyric have turned this stretch of the old industrial corridor into the most urban spot in town. Festival Foods is a city, not a campus, grocery store. Historic Breese Stevens Field has new turf, cementing its status as one of the premier soccer fields in the Midwest. Events from neighborhood markets to Shakespeare plays to concerts (Wilco, the Avett Brothers) are now held in the old WPA-built stadium. Across the street, Robinia Courtyard is an eatery/drinkery and casual music venue; a more formal stage, The Sylvee, is new in the office and collaborative space that houses Starting Block Madison.
Chris Lotten
Breese Stevens Field; 917 E. Mifflin St.
The action doesn’t stop in the 800 and 900 blocks, either; it rolls all the way down to the Yahara River where the huge new Marling apartments have just been completed.
Mansion Hill
The Edgewater Hotel underwent an extensive addition and remodel in 2014, adding more public space in the form of an open plaza with unobstructed lake views that plays host to live music in the summer and ice skating in the winter. It’s also home to one of the few lakeside restaurants in town; pull up a boat and dock at the pier.
James Madison Park is the site of one of the city’s most dependable pick-up basketball games, a volleyball court, a beach, and rentable canoe and kayak storage. It’s also a prime site for Frisbee, kite-flying, sunbathing and just wasting time.
The park is also home to the Gates of Heaven, an 1863 sandstone Romanesque revival former synagogue moved to the park in 1971. It’s popular as a site for community meetings, weddings and other events.
Some of Madison’s finest 19th century homes are located here. Stand at the corner of North Pinckney and East Gilman and you can see four at once: the Keenan House, the Kendall House, the Bashford House and the Pierce House. That last one is now the Mansion Hill Inn, so you too can spend the night as a fashionable Madisonian might have, circa 1856.
Residents in the 21st century include preservationist rehabbers, residential cooperatives, student renters and fraternities and sororities.
Bassett & Mifflin West
There’s new life in this area, formerly student flats in older houses. More upscale projects have joined Fourth Ward Lofts and Metropolitan Place — 306 West, Nine Line, Seven27 and Tobacco Lofts apartments.
The area lacks a single commercial hub. You might have a sandwich and a glass of wine at Casetta Kitchen on West Wash just off the Square, or grab coffee and a Porter Pocket at Porter in the former Milwaukee Road depot. There, the Motorless Motion bike shop serves bicyclists on the Southwest Bike Path as they make their way from Lake Monona to the west side.
Cafe Social
Cafe Social; 102 N. Bedford St.
Cafe Social imports its own small-farmer Colombian coffee. The Bassett neighborhood is also home to WORT-FM, Madison’s volunteer-based, community radio station since 1975.
But hints of this area as a working class warehouse hub still remain — such as the Main Depot tap.
Brittingham Boats
Brittingham Boats; 701 W. Brittingham Pl.
Law and Brittingham parks feature plenty of lakeside real estate. There’s a water ski show in the summer at Law Park. A beach and concession stand with various watercraft for rent via Brittingham Boats make this a convenient access point to Lake Monona. The Brittingham Boat House, on the National Register of Historic Places since 1977, is home to the Camp Randall Rowing Club.
Pete Hodapp
It’s getting harder to tell exactly where the east side starts. In its aspirations, “downtown” is now creeping down the central artery of East Washington Avenue, yet to either side — the Willy Street neighborhood and Tenney-Lapham — what one sees, essentially, is still old east side, residential small town.
Williamson-Marquette
Willy Street was once the heart of bohemian-hippie Madison. And it still is, though the quirkier edges are smoothing. Yes, there are new apartment and condo projects. Still, the scale here is human. The defying-all-conventions Broom Street Theater, staging local plays since 1969, is still thriving. And where else would the city’s first dedicated cold-pressed juice bar, Saints Madison, locate? And what better home to the city’s only skateboard park, inside McPike Park? (Or McPark, if you’re in a hurry.)
It should go without saying that the grocery cooperative, the Willy Street Co-op, founded in 1974, is such an institution that it barely needs a name. “The Co-op,” in this town, means just one thing.
There are no chain restaurants, save for success stories like Roman Candle, which started here and has since expanded across the metro area. Rather, there is admirable representation of global cuisine — from Southern American (That BBQ Joint) to Jamaican (Jamerica) to Indonesian (Bandung) to Ethiopian (Buraka) — and that’s just a start.
Live music ranges from the coffee house space at Mother Fool’s to the venerable Crystal Corner, which showcases the best in local rock, folk and blues bands, with the crowd amiably agreeing to ignore the venue’s awkwardly placed, stage-blocking post.
In summer, the best place to catch music is at the neighborhood’s truly remarkable festivals: the Willy Street Fair, la Fête de Marquette, the Waterfront and Orton Park festivals and the Central Park Sessions. All, free.
Schenk-Atwood-Starkweather-Yahara
Atwood Avenue may be the least pretentious of key thoroughfares. There’s something sincere and old-fashioned about it, even as it’s being spiffed up with new office and residential buildings.
The heart of the neighborhood is the Barrymore Theatre, built in 1929 (then known as “The Eastwood”). It’s owned by the nonprofit Schenk-Atwood Revitalization Association, and hosts concerts, film fests and neighborhood events. While its twinkling-star ceiling may be most memorable, the Barrymore is currently raising funds to replace something closer to the floor — its sagging seats. From the bottom of our — bottoms — we suggest: Donate.
Forward-looking spots like Next Door and One Barrel brew their own small-batch craft beer, BarleyPop Tap and Shop is a carefully-curated tap and bottle shop, and Table Wine does much the same for select wines. This is an easy neighborhood in which to kick back and unplug, enjoying the best of the 20th century at Wisconsin taverns like Woody Anne’s, The Harmony and The Ohio.
Upper-end dining, long absent from the area, has arrived with cocktail and local food supporter Mint Mark; Nook, a tiny tasting menu bistro, is slated to open this fall.
The Goodman Community Center is the other pillar of the neighborhood, with its exercise classes, senior programs, food pantry, after-school activities, playground, gym and meeting rooms.
Jennifer Bastian
Arts + Literature Laboratory (Spooky Boobs Collective shown); 2021 Winnebago St.
The Arts + Literature Laboratory represents one of the neighborhood’s art and performance spaces, where poetry and prose get as much attention as music and visual arts. As the neighborhood expands to include the new Union Corners, it is embracing Communication, a new all-ages music and performance space across from the Malt House on Milwaukee Street.
The Olbrich Gardens area presents the next frontier of redevelopment in the area, with the long-awaited rehab of the Garver Feed Mill and new housing arriving on Fair Oaks at the site of the former Kessenich’s restaurant supply. Explore the area’s nature corridor via the walking and bicycling path that follows the course of Starkweather Creek from Fair Oaks Avenue all the way to Madison College.
Tenney-Lapham
Tenney-Lapham’s character is changing, too. Homes that have long been subdivided into rentals are being converted back to single-family homes, while small industry that used to edge the neighborhood — like the Madison Dairy — has been replaced by apartments.
The area’s commercial center, on East Johnson Street at Paterson, is still home to such longtime residents as Burnie’s Rock Shop, Spruce Tree Music and U Frame It. But The Robin Room, a chill cocktail bar; Macha Tea, a Japanese-influence tea house; and Forequarter, Underground Kitchen’s flagship dining room; and Salvatore’s Tomato Pies, have injected new cachet into the area. Old Town Cycles keeps everyone’s cruiser and fixie in tip-top repair.
The Robin Room
The Robin Room; 821 E. Johnson St.
Bungalows and Craftsman-style homes still line the charming side streets closer to Tenney Park. And the park itself has recently undergone a sprucing up, with the removal of invasives, replanting of native species and shoreline stabilization.
Carolyn Fath
North Street Cabaret; 610 North St.
Eken Park
This up-and-coming neighborhood near the former Oscar Mayer shows its working-class origins in its modest, World War II-era houses, which Historic Madison Inc. chose highlight in its 2017 Alternate Parade of Homes tour. The intersection of North Street and Commercial boasts Ogden’s North Street Diner, The Tip Top Tavern and, for entertainment, the North Street Cabaret. Dexter’s, a craft beer bar with one of the most popular Friday fish fries in town, is a couple of blocks away at North and East Johnson streets. East Madison Little League’s diamond is in the Eken Park neighborhood, too.
Rob Taylor, 2TravelDads.com
HotelRED; 1501 Monroe St.
Go west? In Madison, geography is destiny. Choosing between the west side and the east side is the big decision, though north and south are also telling, even iconoclastic, picks.
While east traditionally meant “working class” and west meant “connected to the university,” now renters and first-time homeowners may look at ease of commute to major employers like American Family Insurance (east) or Epic (west).
The west side is spread out. It has a real boulevard, Midvale. It’s where the radio and TV stations are. Now there’s a Dave and Buster’s. The Apple store is on the west side. There are nice city parks, too — Hoyt and Garner and Owen Conservation Park.
Vilas-Dudgeon-Monroe
These near-west neighborhoods have easy proximity to the area’s hospitals and to the UW-Madison and Edgewood campuses. Student renters fade out increasingly as the roar of traffic on Regent Street recedes. It’s all a mass of red, though (and people parking cars on lawns), on Badger football Saturdays.
The namesake park is Vilas, home of the Henry Vilas Zoo. The free zoo, owned by Dane County, is joined by a city playground (home to the legendary “Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe” slide), ice skating in winter, and in summer, a beach on Lake Wingra.
Carolyn Fath
Wingra Park and Boat Livery; 824 Knickerbocker St.
Wingra, the smallest of the area’s five lakes, makes an attractive destination for kayakers and paddle boarders as well as bicyclists, walkers and joggers who circumnavigate it with ease compared to the more hectic routes around larger Mendota and Monona.
On its far side is the UW Arboretum, where residents find an urban oasis. Owls, cranes, beavers, weasels, mink, muskrats, fox, wild turkeys — 35 species of mammal and some 200 resident and migratory bird species can be found here, not to mention insects, reptiles and amphibians.
Zip-Dang
Zip-Dang; 2606 Monroe St.
Monroe Street is an advertisement for walkability. There’s a grocery (a Trader Joe’s), restaurants and coffee shops, a bookstore (Mystery to Me), a boxing gym (Canvas Club), a Native American arts and jewelry store (Katy’s), and a shop specializing in Oriental rugs (Borokhim’s). A second shopping enclave south of Edgewood boasts a yarn shop (The Knitting Tree), up-cycled eco-conscious clothing, local artist prints and more (Zip-Dang), and the costume shop of the Madison Theatre Guild, where anyone can rent a costume for a production, a party or Halloween.
Hilldale-Midvale-Shorewood Hills
Hilldale, once a classic early 1960s shopping center, reinvented itself as an enclosed mall in the 1970s and has now reinvented itself yet again as an indoor-outdoor shopping community of sorts, with upscale national brands (Kate Spade, L.L. Bean, lululemon, Sur La Table, The North Face) and local favorites (University Bookstore, Morgan’s Shoes, Twigs and Playthings).
Close to Hilldale is the commercial stretch of University Avenue, home to Whole Foods, Penzey’s Spices, Vom Fass (artisanal oils, vinegars and spirits), The Conscious Carnivore (local meat butcher shop), Century House (mid-century modern and Scandinavian furniture), and Wisconsin Cutlery and Kitchen Supply.
The village of Shorewood Hills is home to one of Madison’s most significant Frank Lloyd Wright designs: the Unitarian Meeting House, 900 University Bay Drive. The worship space, built from native limestone and echoing various prairie motifs, is open for tours weekdays at 10:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m., May through September, and every Sunday.
Shorewood Hills takes up a good deal of the lakeside real estate with residential properties. But investigate the neighboring Lakeshore Nature Preserve, with 12 miles of walking trails in Eagle Heights Woods, Wally Baumann Woods, Frautschi Point and, of course, Picnic Point.
Wisconsin-Explorer.blogspot.com
Cherokee Marsh, North Unit; 6098 N. Sherman Ave.
The north side always started at Oscar Mayer. Now that the wiener maker has shuttered the Madison plant, the factory and the acres surrounding it are, if not quite a blank slate, a big opportunity for change. Stay tuned.
Warner Park is home to the Madison Mallards summer baseball team. East plays football there, plus there’s lots of soccer and summer softball, a popular boat launch and an off-leash dog area as well.
Across the street from the park, Northside Town Center is the area’s shopping hub, with the third branch of the Willy Street Co-op, a Goodwill, several restaurants (Benvenuto’s, Bierock, Bistro Honda and Habenero’s), a hardware store and gym. It’s also home to the Lakeview branch of the Madison Public Library and, on Sunday mornings, the extensive Northside Farmers’ Market.
Madison Mallards
Madison Mallards Stadium; 2920 N. Sherman Ave.
Ale Asylum, the third-largest craft brewery in the state, is on the north side with a tap room that often features limited-edition test batches, a full food menu and tours (on the hour, between noon and 5 p.m. on Sundays).
The village of Maple Bluff, home to the Executive Residence (that means the governor’s mansion), hugs the shore of Lake Mendota. Nearby Lakewood Plaza is the site of longtime Madison butcher Jacobson Brothers, Manna Cafe and Bakery, craft beer gastropub Bear & Bottle, Drackenbergs Cigar Bar, and, inevitably, Vic Pierce Liquor. Yes, it’s the liquor store that sells until midnight instead of 9 p.m. (because it’s located in Maple Bluff).
North-siders love easy proximity to recreational space, from Cherokee Marsh conservation park, and Token Creek County Park (camping, horseshoes, horses — yes, there’s a bridle trail — off-leash dog area and disc golf course) to golf courses — Cherokee Country Club, Maple Bluff Country Club and Bridges, a city course.
Catherine Boldt
Goodman Park swimming pool; 325 W. Olin Ave.
The south side has long been one of the most diverse areas of the city. The major artery is Park Street, where global cuisine is king. Restaurants include Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, Middle Eastern, Indian and soul food. Rockhound is the local brewpub. Pan-Asian supermarkets like Asian Midway are joined by
the Japanese-specific Oriental Shop and the Korean-specific Oriental Food Mart. Then there’s Yue Wah, which is pan-everything, including aisles devoted specifically to Indian, Israeli, Vietnamese and Indonesian foodstuffs.
The Alliant Energy Center is home to myriad events — chief among them the Dane County Fair, the World Dairy Expo and the World’s Largest Brat Fest every Memorial Day weekend. Don’t miss any of those. Remember, you don’t need to own a dairy farm to have fun at the World Dairy Expo.
Nearby, Quann Park has a spacious off-leash dog park. And did you know there are tennis courts here? A dozen, in fact. Adjacent Goodman Park hosts softball and the city swimming pool. Waterslides? Check. Kid-friendly shallow water play area? Check. Diving boards? Check. Adult lap area ? Yes. And a season-ending pup-friendly Dog Paddle (a fundraiser for the Madison police department’s K-9 unit)? You bet.
The Wingra Creek Bike Path winds through the area, joining Lake Wingra and the Arboretum to Lake Monona.
The charming shopping area along Lakeside Street in the Bay Creek neighborhood has the Lakeside Street Coffee House, high-end bike shop Cronometro, pet supply store Nutzy Mutz and Crazy Catz, and the longtime holistic pharmacy Quintessence. Believe it or not, there’s even a tiny beach here on Monona Bay — Bernie’s Beach.
Bram’s Addition is a historic neighborhood of Madison’s African American community. There, Penn Park is the center of the city’s now week-long Juneteenth celebration commemorating the end of slavery. A major renovation of the park shelter and funding for more community activities has infused new life into the green space. Coming soon: a bike fix-it station, with tools to borrow and a repair coach available.
The South Madison Farmers’ Market is one of the most vibrant and crucial in the city. It’s unique in that it is held four times a week, at three different sites: the Labor Temple, the Novation Center and the Village on Park, a city-owned complex of services and private enterprises in a shopping center. The Labor Temple also boasts a bar/restaurant open to all, with food from Noosh’s Laila Borokhim.
Village on Park is also the new home to the Wisconsin Science Museum as well as the UW Space Place, an education center for astronomy. Madison College’s south campus is there as well, although a new campus is being built nearby at South Park Street and Badger Road, with an estimated completion of fall 2019.