The John and Amanda Hill Grocery is located in one of the first centers of Madison's African American community; it was active as a business circa 1917-1980.
At this historical moment, historic preservation may not seem to be at the top of any list of priorities. But in May, Madison’s Common Council adopted its first historic preservation plan, a good part of which is devoted to a summary of the city’s new Underrepresented Communities Historic Resource Survey Report. The 245-page survey lists properties in the city that represent important persons, groups and events crucial to the African American, First Nations, Hmong, Latino/a, LGBTQ and women’s communities, along the way relating important chapters of Madison history that sometimes go overlooked.
The text of the historic preservation plan notes that “Diverse people, architecture, and activities all contribute to the culture and character of cities.” And it could be argued that preserving those stories couldn’t be more important than right now.
Researchers read books, combed documents and spoke to residents in coming up with what to include in the document: 117 resources of historic interest, 98 potential landmarks, nine properties eligible for the state or national registers of historic places, and 39 that are already designated as Madison landmarks. The plan ultimately provides guidance when, for instance, a building is threatened by redevelopment, or conversely, an owner wants to make improvements.
“Hopefully the report will guide city residents and neighborhoods in recognizing and preserving significant buildings,” says Jason Tish, former executive director of the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation and operator of Archetype Historic Property Consultants, who was one of the researchers on the survey. “We need to articulate the history of these communities before we lose the [buildings].”
Historian Jason Tish explains via a Zoom talk how the Brooks Street YMCA was a key site in both the women's and LGBTQ movements, hosting a number of groups over the years.
Tish and city preservation planner Heather Bailey presented the underrepresented communities survey in two Zoom talks in July, the first with Bailey discussing the methodology and motives behind the project and some of the significant African American, Hmong and Latino/a sites; the second with Tish focusing on sites key to the women’s movement and the early gay rights movement.
Bailey explained that in coming up with Madison’s first citywide historic preservation plan, the city wanted to “diversify the stories we preserve,” realizing that Madison’s historic inventory — buildings already designated as landmarks, for instance — do not tell the full story. “A lot of preservation programs are going through this now,” Bailey said. “We wanted to be more purposeful in telling the full story of Madison.” Guiding researchers in part was information from the National Trust for Historic Preservation, including its series When Does It Become Social Justice? Thoughts on Intersectional Preservation Practice. The guide acknowledges that historic preservation can seem “passive, conservative and elitist” but argues that the field can also be “cutting edge, pluralistic and forward thinking.”
“Historic preservation that is seeking to authentically engage with social justice must address both the institutions that perpetuate identity-based inequities and the resistance to such systems,” the National Trust’s guide reads.
The survey contains some expected properties — like the John and Amanda Hill grocery store at 649 E. Dayton St., already a city of Madison landmark and listed in the state and national registers of historic places as significant to Madison’s early African American community and neighborhood.
Many more are unexpected, and fascinating. The Willie Lou Harris house at 405 Bram St. was the home of Willie Lou Harris, the first licensed Black practical nurse in Madison, and her husband, George. The Harrises were instrumental in developing the Bram’s Addition neighborhood. “In 1934, George and Willie purchased eight lots in South Madison, then outside the city limits. The area was annexed in 1944, and the streets paved. The intention from that time on was to develop the lots into homes for their families. During the late 1940s, Willie Lou Harris led an effort to construct several Minimal Traditional style houses along the 400 block of Bram Street. Much of the building material was taken from wrecked military barracks from Truax Field, which were disassembled, moved, and reconstructed in the Bram’s Addition neighborhood,” the report reads.
Several sites are listed in association with UW-Madison chef Carson Gulley, who not only invented the dining service’s fudge bottom pie, but fought to buy a home in the Crestwood neighborhood and, along with his wife, Beatrice, “became Madison’s first Black television personalities. The station WMTV invited the chef and his wife to host a cooking show called What’s Cookin’ in 1953.” The chef also hosted a radio cooking program on WIBA called “Cooking School of the Air.”
Some sites come up multiple times for different reasons. The Brooks Street YMCA was home to many activist organizations and publications for the women’s movement and gay rights movement in the 1960s-1980s. It was also home to the Lesbian Switchboard, an early gay rights organization that offered counseling as well as “a library of lesbian resources, including information on alternative services in Madison, feminist groups across the country, and other lesbian and gay organizations in the United States.”
Gene Parks' duplex made the list.
There’s also information on the duplex belonging to Gene Parks (first Black alder and civil rights pioneer), the apartment of Jim Yeadon (the first openly gay man elected to a common council in the country), public art by Harry Whitehorse (Ho-Chunk artist and member of a family well known as the owners of Chief Auto Body and Repair in Monona), site of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (an early Latino/a political group at 206 Bernard Court), and offices of the Women’s Transit Authority (a woman-only ride service) — now the used clothing store Upshift — on East Johnson Street. Many are familiar buildings Madisonians pass by every day. The list in particular of women’s and LGBTQ groups might remind long-time residents how much was going on just a few decades ago that’s already been mostly forgotten.
There are no specific next steps for the identified sites — no walking tours or pamphlets in the works, for instance — although broadly, the plan states that its information could be used to “create story sharing activities, local and city-wide, that highlight Madison’s past and current diversity.”
A site or physical building where an event took place or a significant person lived “is nice to have,” says Tish, in a phone interview with Isthmus. “Histories are written in books. But to have a physical place to walk through, touch, that’s a different way to convey that history, to make it real.”
Tish wishes that there had been more time and more funding for more research: “I know we missed things.”
He would also like it if there were some way for community members to add additional information to what is already written in the historical survey. “It would be fantastic if it were a living document,” Tish says.
But right now, he hopes for opportunities to get the information the researchers did compile (and there is quite a lot of it) to the public: “It’s hard to get it to people because right now, it’s a plan and maybe not that interesting unless you get really nerdy about plans. But to take the content and put it in other formats and add more people’s perspectives, is an opportunity to affect how people live in the city. There’s real potential if we can get it off the city’s shelf and into people’s hands.”
