The following buildings are listed in the order built. All are
contributing properties to the NRHP's Bascom Hill Historic District unless otherwise noted.
North Hall (1851) North Hall was the university's first building, constructed where "North Dorm" had been drawn in the general plan, at mid-right in the 1885 engraving. It was designed by John Rague in
Federal style, a rather plain, sober architectural style popular before the
Civil War. It stands four stories, clad in Madison sandstone - rather similar to dorms of the day at
Ann Arbor, Michigan. Construction cost $19,000, and it opened in September 1851. In 1966 the building by itself was named a
National Historic Landmark. In those early years, the university was not well-funded. Each new building required approval of funds from the Wisconsin legislature, and in its eagerness to educate and to show that the new state of Wisconsin was on a par with Michigan, the university often overextended itself. "The $20,000 cost of [South Hall] so crippled the University at the time that the purchase of books and apparatus had to be temporarily discontinued and the curriculum limited." In the early years the curriculum of the university focused on geography, English grammar,
Latin and
Greek. That curriculum shifted to more practical subjects as years passed. Particularly with the
Morrill Act of 1862, the UW began offering instruction in "the agricultural and mechanical arts." In 1884 South Hall became home to the Department of Agriculture and was renamed
Agriculture Hall. In 1890 in this building,
Stephen Babcock developed the
Babcock test for milk fat content. Tinsley's own biographer observed that it was "a handsome and dignified if somewhat pompous, edifice." It was built from 1857 to 1859, and was the first UW building used entirely for instruction. Like South Hall, the building of Bascom left the university financially stressed for years. In early years Bascom Hall was called
Main Hall,
University Hall, and
Old Main. In 1894 the original semi-circular portico was replaced with the current
Jeffersonian portico and the dome was enlarged. In 1920 the building's name was changed to Bascom Hall to honor the former UW president. which is not included in the Bascom Hill Historic District.
Old Science Hall (1877, destroyed) By the 1870s Main Hall (now Bascom) was jam-packed with classrooms, labs and students. More instructional space was needed.
Henry C. Koch of Milwaukee designed a four-story U-shaped building clad in Madison sandstone and
styled Italianate, located where the new Science Hall now stands. It housed labs and shops in the first floor/basement, chemistry and physics on the second floor, civil engineering and geology on the third, and natural history on the fourth, with an art gallery at the front. It even had flush toilets. After only seven years of use, a fire started in December 1884, possibly in a forge room, and fire suppression plans failed. The whole building burned.
Music Hall (1879) While the 1877 Science Hall still existed, leaders felt the university's greatest need was a space large enough for the whole student body to assemble. The university also needed a better place for a library, and again had some funds to work with. University President Bascom engaged Madison architect
David R. Jones, who designed a dramatic building with a large square corner clock tower, with walls of Madison sandstone (quarried at what is now
Hoyt Park) trimmed with darker Superior brownstone, with corner
buttresses and
pinnacles, and with gently pointed windows filled with stained glass created by George A. Misch of Chicago. The general style is
Gothic Revival (emphasis on the vertical), and the building looks like a church without the Christian iconography. The building was initially called
Assembly Hall, and the auditorium was used for "lectures, plays, recitals, operas, and concerts." But after some confusion between "Assembly Hall" and the "
Assembly chamber" one mile away, the name was changed to
Library Hall. The hall's "good acoustics and pleasant setting made it ideal for the frequent literary society debates and free lectures series, both well attended by Madison residents." The building is symmetric with a massive 5-story tower centered over the main entrance - a castle crossed with a shoe factory. All construction bids came in higher than the regents wanted, so they appointed Allan Conover, one of the university's own professors of
civil engineering, as
general contractor. Professor Conover changed the design to reduce risk of another fire, replacing Koch's "slow-burning" wood framework and load-bearing walls with a steel skeleton and hollow clay tile. The steel in particular was progressive, as Science Hall was only the second building in the U.S. with a steel framework. The building ended up costing $285,000, far above the initial estimates, and requests for more funds prompted an uproar and legislative hearings, but the fireproofing changes were hard to argue with, and it was determined that the initial estimates had been unrealistic. Nationally prominent geologist
Charles Van Hise worked in Science Hall. He was "the first in the nation to apply microscopic
lithology to an extensive study of crystalline rocks, and to use those results in the formulation of geologic principles." Van Hise was also an early champion of conservation of natural resources. Other notable scientists worked in the building, but it was particularly for the association with Van Hise's work on geology that Science Hall was named a National Historic Landmark in 1994. and they moved the furnaces to this building. It generated steam, which was piped through tunnels to the new Science Hall, and later to the 1892 law building and other buildings. The heating plant was designed by H.C. Koch, who also designed both Science Halls. He covered it in cut stone, with segmental arches over many openings, and one chimney. In the 1890s it was extended 70 feet to the south with a second chimney. The university continued to grow, and in 1908 built a new central heating plant south of University Ave. With the old heating plant free, the new Mining Engineering department moved in, remodeling the building to make assaying labs and ore dressing rooms. Mining stayed in the building until about 1931. The building is now called
Radio Hall because the university's pioneering radio station
WHA moved in from Sterling Hall in 1934 and operated here until 1972, when it moved to Vilas Hall. The new building is not included in the NRHP's Bascom Hill Historic District.
Armory and Gymnasium (1894) The
Red Gym isn't on Bascom Hill, but it is a contributing property to the Bascom Hill Historic District, and the NRHP nomination considers it "perhaps the most significant historical site in the District." Meanwhile, some in the state legislature wanted to construct an armory in Madison to be ready in case of civil disturbances like the
Haymarket Riot in Chicago less than ten years earlier. Allan Conover and Lew Porter designed a fortress-like structure with
turrets and towers with
corbels and
battlements, in red brick trimmed with sandstone. The first floor initially held the commandant's office, the artillery drill room, bowling alleys and a swimming pool. The second held a large drill hall/basketball court/assembly hall with a 43-foot ceiling. The third held the gymnasium, with a baseball cage, gymnastics equipment, rowing machines, two 160-foot rifle ranges, and a 440-yard track. Over the years the assembly hall hosted
William McKinley,
William Jennings Bryan,
Eugene Debs, and
Upton Sinclair,
State Historical Society (1900) The university's library had a good home in Assembly/Library Hall when it was built in 1879, but by the 1890s the library's books had overflowed into basements around campus. Meanwhile, the State Historical Society's collection - much of it irreplaceable - was jammed into the capitol building where it was vulnerable to fire. From 1895 to 1899 the state legislature approved funds for a shared building to solve both problems. Milwaukee architects
Ferry & Clas designed the new building in
Neoclassical style, with a broad
Ionic colonnaded
portico, and exterior of
Bedford limestone. Inside are mosaic tile floors, marble staircases, and a large reading room. The building's footprint was U-shaped, with the historical society's stacks in the south end and the university's stacks in the north. In 1952 the university's library moved to the new Memorial Library building across the square and the Historical Society expanded to take over the entire building.
Birge Hall (1912) Growing science programs had driven Engineering to move to its own building in 1901, and they continued to grow. In 1905 the Dean of L&S
Edward Birge recommended a new Biology building to relieve crowding in Science Hall. State architect
Arthur Peabody and
Jarvis Hunt of Chicago designed a 5-story
Neoclassical-styled structure behind Bascom and South Hall. It was completed in 1912, and initially called the Botany building.
Wisconsin Alumni Magazine described entering from the Bascom mall side and seeing: ...biological specimens of general interest which fills most of the ground floor of the main building. Passing straight through the museum doors on both sides open into the auditorium, which seats about four hundred. There are two floors below this, the basement, which contained the department of plant physiology, and the sub-basement containing labs and work rooms which opened directly into the greenhouses to the south of the auditorium. Staircases from the museum give access to the upper floors, which housed research labs, chart and dark rooms, a
herbarium, offices, lecture rooms, a library and Prof. Owen's butterfly collection. In 1950 the building was renamed
Birge Hall a week after Edward Birge died. Wings were added in 1956 and 1980. The lowest construction bid came from Jacob Pfeffer of Duluth, which led to trouble because he operated an
open shop. In 1927 union workers left work and picketed in protest of the non-union workers. Police didn't intervene and things deteriorated until on May 20 a group of 200 union supporters attacked Pfeffer's workers, beating them and throwing some in the lake. Bones were broken and one man lost an eye. After more violence, public opinion shifted against the union and the courts and police stepped in. Peabody's daughter Charlotte designed the terrace facing Lake Mendota. The
Wisconsin Union Theater wing was added in 1938, designed in
Moderne style by
Michael Hare and
Paul Cret.
Warren Laird and Paul Cret designed the 85-foot sandstone tower so that the
balustrade echoes that on Bascom Hall. Inside is the
carillon, an instrument where a keyboardist rings tuned
bronze bells. At the dedication concert in 1936,
carillonneur Ira Schroeder played
On Wisconsin and
Drink to Me Only With Thine Eyes, among other songs. An automated system rings bells on the hour, playing songs such as “
Varsity” and “
On, Wisconsin!”. On most summer Sundays a human carillonneur provides a free concert for the public.
Humanities Building and Elvehjem (1969) Enrollment grew in the years after
World War II. New buildings for the sciences were funded by federal money for science education and funds from
WARF, but many humanities subjects like history and art were left scattered across older buildings like Bascom Hall. In 1959 the History Building Committee expressed their frustration: "The map situation in the department is deplorable.... We need a building." The university selected prominent Chicago architect
Harry Weese to lead the design of a solution. Rather than the three towers (history, music and art) that had previously been considered and which would have visually blocked the old buildings on Bascom Hill from the city, Weese proposed a single lower structure at the foot of Bascom Hill, with landscaped green space around. As feedback came in, more space was needed, and the building grew to fill much of the green space. Costs had to be cut, finishes cheapened, and the inner courtyards filled with stone rather than green landscaping.. The building still has problems with leaks, heating and acoustics, and is slated to be replaced around 2030.
Muir Woods Northwest of North Hall where
John Muir lived, and running down the hill to Lake Mendota, remains a 7-acre tract of woods where Muir no doubt rambled in his free time. In 1959 the woods was involved in a controversy when the UW decided to take a bite out of it for the Sociology-Anthropology-Economics Building - a controversy that roused protest from various quarters, including
Aldo Leopold's widow and Frank Lloyd Wright, who wrote of the regents' plan: ...This determination to cut into the fine remaining forest for some expedient building is going to prove to subsequent generations that 'regentry' need be neither scholar nor gentleman... The Social Sciences building went forward, but the uproar marked a turning point for university planners. ==See also==