Dowling Apartment Building

About this property

The Dowling Apartment Building was built as a luxury apartment block a half mile south of the capitol in Madison, Wisconsin in 1922. In 2002 it was added to the State and National Register of Historic Places. William L. Dowling was born in Madison in 1864 and raised in the neighborhood where he later built this apartment. As a young man, he worked in the freight department of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad, then moved to mail clerk, then partnered in a shoe store on Capitol Square. By WWI, William was a community leader, chairing the local draft board and serving on the Madison Common Council for seven years in the 1910s and 1920s. In middle age William married Margaret Graham. She had moved from Ohio to Madison in 1900, starting as a hat trimmer in the Mahoney Hat Shop, then buying the shop in 1904. She ran her M. L. Graham Hat Shop until 1917 when she married William, then sold the shop to her sisters. The Dowlings had their apartment block built in 1922, ten years after the first such building appeared in Madison. The apartment block form of housing appeared in New York and Chicago in the last quarter of the 19th century, a way to expand the amount of housing in a neighborhood where land was limited, and to free residents from maintaining a yard and exterior of their home. In Madison the first apartment blocks were built in 1911. At the time, Madison's population was doubling about every twenty years, due to expansion of manufacturing, state government, and the university. The Dowling Block was designed by Philip Dean of Madison, three stories tall, with a footprint like a squashed letter H, clad in dark brick and trimmed with light stone. Neoclassical styling is present in the molding and modillion in the front cornice and the pilasters and entablature around the front entrance. The name "DOWLING" is inscribed above that entrance and a lantern hangs on either side. That entrance door has sidelights and a transom. A hip-roofed stair tower is attached to the back of the building, clad in stucco. The initial construction cost was $30,000. Inside were ten apartments, with a central hall on each floor. The Dowlings themselves lived in the three-bedroom apartment A - one whole side of the first floor. The apartments were finished with mahogany doors, birds' eye maple floors, plaster walls and ceilings, hex tiles in the kitchens and bathrooms, Craftsman-style woodwork, built-in cupboards, dining room chandeliers, and a fireplace in each apartment. In the central hall was a trash chute, laundry chute, and dumbwaiter. Opposite the Dowlings' apartment on the first floor was a two-bedroom apartment, a janitor's office, and a garage. The floors above had two one-bedroom apartments on each side of each floor. In the basement was a common laundry room, storage, and an incinerator.

Location

Categories

Property data from the National Register of Historic Places, National Park Service (public domain).

Description adapted from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

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