Mansion Hill Historic District

About this property

The Mansion Hill Historic District encompasses a part of the Mansion Hill neighborhood northwest of the capitol square in Madison, Wisconsin. In the 19th century the district was home to much of Madison's upper class, and held the largest concentration of large, ornate residences in the city, but in the 20th century it shifted to student housing. In 1997 the district was added to the National Register of Historic Places. Madison was surveyed in 1836 and incorporated as a village in 1846. Initial construction was mostly near the capitol square and King Street, while the hill that would become Mansion Hill remained undeveloped forest. In 1846 J.T. Clark built a wooden house in that forest - no longer extant. Then in 1851 Judge Levi B. Vilas built a stylish sandstone house at 521 North Henry Street and Jeremiah T. Marston built a similar house across the street at 520 N Henry. These two fine homes no longer exist, but others followed, and some from the 1850s do survive. The city's population had grown to 6,864 by 1856, but growth slowed during the Civil War. By 1870 large stylish houses flanked Gilman Street from North Butler to North Park Streets. Many on the northwest side of Gilman sat on large lots that reached down to Lake Mendota. Southeast of Gilman, smaller houses stood on smaller lots - many in fine Greek Revival and Italianate style. The neighborhood saw another construction boom starting in the 1880s. Along with growth at the UW and state government, Madison was adding some manufacturing to its economy with concerns like Fuller and Johnson, which made farm implements. Queen Anne style began to overtake the Italianate which had been popular. As styles changed, some of the old-fashioned houses from the 1850s and 60s were replaced by Queen Anne homes, and the large lots were subdivided to make sites for more homes. Starting in the 1880s some houses were built for rental, followed by duplexes and other rental properties. From 1910 to 1950 demographics changed as demand for student housing prompted the construction of rooming houses and apartment buildings in the neighborhood. The UW population was growing and the university provided on-campus housing only for women. With the influx of students into the neighborhood, many families gradually left for the newly popular suburbs, and some of their old mansions were remodeled into multi-unit housing. From the 1950s to the 1970s, a number of old houses in the district were demolished to make way for new buildings. In response, residents petitioned the city to have the district designated a landmark and protect its history. The district became a city landmark in 1976, officially becoming Madison's first historic district.

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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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