Fourth Lake Ridge Historic District

About this property

The Fourth Lake Ridge Historic District is a historic neighborhood on the Lake Mendota side of the isthmus in Madison, Wisconsin, with most homes built from the 1890s to 1930s, but a few as old as the 1850s. In 1998 the historic district was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Early Madison was sometimes called a city of four hills: Capitol Hill, Mansion Hill, the Third Lake Ridge, and the Fourth Lake Ridge. Fourth Lake was an early name for Lake Mendota, so "Fourth Lake Ridge" refers to the ridge along Lake Mendota in which the historic district is now located, five to ten blocks north of the capitol square. The ridge was part of James Doty's initial 1836 plat of Madison, but not much development occurred in this area until the 1850s. The blocks nearer the capitol generally filled up earlier, as did the south side of the isthmus where the rail lines ran. But a few large houses (described below) were built on Fourth Lake Ridge in the 1850s, and the lots slowly filled. By 1890 many of the lots along Gorham Street were occupied, with large houses along the lake, mid-sized houses on the other side, and smaller houses on E. Johnson from the 500 to 700 blocks. In this era before cars, the distance to capitol square had discouraged people from building homes on the Fourth Lake Ridge because it was a bit far to walk to work. But when the blocks around the capitol became full, an eight block walk became more attractive, and when a streetcar line was built in the 1890s from the capitol out along E. Johnson to Baldwin, the area began to fill in with homes of the Queen Anne style that was popular then. Some of the large parcels were further subdivided, like Castle Place, Prospect Place and Washburn Place. Some older homes were replaced with newer ones. Architectural styles shifted to modern styles and period revival styles. Growth began to slow after World War I and was largely done by World War II. Here are some good examples of different styles of architecture in the district, in roughly the order built. The Robert White house at 633 E. Gorham St is a 2-story frame house built in 1856 in Italianate style. Hallmarks of the style are the low-pitched roof and the broad eaves supported by double brackets. White was a carpenter who built the house for his own family, then sold it in 1864 to Denson Worthington, Secretary of the Madison Mutual Insurance Co. The William T. Leitch House at 752 E. Gorham was built in 1857, clad in Madison sandstone with a slate roof. The style is Gothic Revival style. Hallmarks of that style in this house are the steeply pitched roofs, the decorated bargeboards, the finials pointing upward, and the cresting. The house is topped by an elaborate cupola. The house was built for William T. Leitch, an English immigrant who ran a wholesale clothing business in New York before coming west to Madison in 1858, where he was elected mayor a few years later and served three terms. Moses Ransom Doyon, a later mayor of Madison, lived in the house from 1881 to 1902. Lawyer and assemblyman Nils P. Haugen lived in the house later, and UW Agricultural Economics professor Asher Hobson later still.

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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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