About this property
Tenney Park – Yahara River Parkway are two historic parks developed from 1900 to 1911 along the Yahara River in Madison, Wisconsin. Both were designed by Ossian Cole Simonds, the father of Prairie School landscape architecture. The parkway runs parallel with the Yahara River, leading to the park where the river meets Lake Mendota. In 1999, the park and parkway were successfully nominated and listed on the State and the National Register of Historic Places. Before White settlement, when the Four Lakes region was home to Native Americans, the Yahara River meandered from Lake Mendota through marsh and swamps, across the isthmus to Lake Monona. In 1849 future governor Leonard J. Farwell dammed the Yahara where it flows out of Lake Mendota and in 1850-1851 built a five-story flour mill on the west bank. The Yahara, then called Catfish Creek, was at some point straightened - apparently by 1885. Madison had been platted in 1836. The community's growth was slow until 1848, when it was selected as the state capital and the location of the University of Wisconsin. In the 1870s the arrival of rail service began to make the city a regional commercial center, and in the 1880s its manufacturing sector began to grow, with manufacture of agricultural implements and later batteries and other goods. Much of the initial growth occurred around the capitol, but as the decades passed, the surrounding areas began to fill in, reaching east up the isthmus. Madison had no public parks for its first fifty years, until residents of the Sixth Ward pushed for a park, raised money, and created Orton Park themselves in 1887. The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago placed its neoclassical buildings in an attractive, clean setting among lagoons and fountains, sparking an interest in public parks in many places. Inspired by that trend, the Madison Park and Pleasure Drive Association was formed in 1894, with an initial goal of developing scenic carriage roads along Lake Mendota. But carriage roads didn't help the majority who couldn't afford a horse. Then in 1899 fourteen acres of land, including the ruins of Farwell's old flour mill, became available on the west bank of the Yahara on the Lake Mendota end. Anna and Mary Thornton offered to sell it to the city to become a park. By this time the Yahara River was the east edge of Madison. Much of the land along the river was marshy - at times a dumping ground for the city's dead horses and pets. Several road and railroad bridges crossed the Yahara. A brewery stood east of the Yahara, Fuller and Johnson had a factory on the west side, and homes were approaching. The Park and Pleasure Drive Association urged the city to buy the land, but the City Council had not yet accepted that public parks were the city's responsibility. Danniel K. Tenney, lawyer and activist, offered to buy the fourteen acres for the city and add $2,500 for development of a park if another $2,500 was raised from other sources. The city contributed $1,500, but the park was initially left to the MPPDA to develop. In contrast to the MPPDA's "pleasure drives," this would be a public park for the common man, so it marks a turning point for the MPPDA.
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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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Questions about this property
When was Tenney Park-Yahara River Parkway listed on the National Register?
Tenney Park-Yahara River Parkway was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on September 16, 1999.
What type of historic resource is Tenney Park-Yahara River Parkway?
Tenney Park-Yahara River Parkway is classified as a site in the National Register of Historic Places.
What is the period of significance for Tenney Park-Yahara River Parkway?
The period of significance for Tenney Park-Yahara River Parkway is recorded as the industrial era, specifically around 1900.
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