Wisconsin Historical Society
A long gone, cast-iron fountain once tapped a natural artesian well.
This isn’t just our Capitol’s centennial. It’s also the centennial of the Capitol Square as we know it.
Or perhaps we should call it “School Square.” Its only other building and the first one finished was no statehouse. It was a school.
Some 70 feet above the lakes, the setting’s natural charms were recognized even before settlement. In 1828 pioneer explorer Col. Ebenezer Brigham camped on the exact spot.
Gazing at the countryside, he declared, “Someday a beautiful city will be built between these lakes and on this spot where I now stand will be erected the Capitol of a new state.”
Well, that’s the story. The first settlers called it “a mass of tangled bushes,” according to early newspaper accounts. Even after the first Capitol was built, you reached it by “paths through tangled coppice.”
The land originally belonged to the Ho-Chunk, who kept a garden roughly where Brigham camped. Settlers found it abandoned, perhaps because wildfires often crossed “from marsh to marsh.” Appropriately, today the Square hosts a vegetable garden.
The parcel originally extended all the way to Lake Monona and halfway to campus, and cost $1,500. (There was some embarrassment in 1935 when it was discovered that the state had misplaced the deed.)
Trees were planted, but it wasn’t until the second Capitol had been completed that landscaping was considered.
“The ground in the park is in its natural state,” complained Gov. Cadwallader Washburn in 1873. “It should be spaded up and brought to a true grade, smoothly rolled, seeded down and walks laid out, in accordance with the plan.”
A year earlier, the Board of Capitol Park Commissioners had asked Chicago landscape architect Horace Cleveland to come up with a new design for the Square, which until then featured such charms as an 1842 board fence, hitching rails and a cesspool.
An iron fence was put in place, boasting “figures upon large gate posts.” The grounds were laced with elaborate paths and a 10-ton, four-tiered, Renaissance-style, cast-iron fountain was placed on the southwest approach. It tapped a natural artesian well.
After the 1904 fire that destroyed the second Capitol, the fence was removed, along with “beautiful elm trees bordering the outer walks.” Streets were widened and the original sidewalk was lost. The state retained the property, however, which is why it controls parking on the Square today.
The first completed building on the Square was a log shanty to house workers who arrived in 1837. It measured 20 by 30 feet.
Clarissa Pierce took the cabin over in 1840 for her “School for Young Ladies,” Madison’s second school; students paid $3 per quarter. It was also later used by a debating society for “weekly tournaments of wit and wisdom.”
Officially the Square is the Capitol Park. Today’s steps, lighting fixtures, urns and approaches were all part of the current building’s design. Even the number of trees per acre were specified: 21.