University of Wisconsin Memorial Union

The story

Written by AI from this property's National Register nomination and the record above; every sentence is checked against its sources before it appears here. Corrections: privacy@treealive.com

The University of Wisconsin Memorial Union is a building at 800 Langdon St. in Madison, Dane County, built from 1926 to 1928 in the Italian Renaissance Revival style. A Theater Wing was added from 1937 to 1939, with further expansions in 1957 and from 2012 to 2014.

Why it's listed

It was listed in the National Register in 2015 under criteria A, B and C, with significance at the national and local levels in education and architecture. The nomination gives its period of significance as 1928 to 1968, spanning the building's 1928 completion to Porter Butts's 1968 retirement.

Physical character

The walls are limestone and Madison sandstone, some of it rock-faced, on a concrete foundation, with a tile roof. It has a domed rotunda, a five-story Central Core, four-story hyphens, a Great Hall, and a groin-vaulted plaster ceiling.

Historical context

Charles R. Van Hise proposed a campus union in 1904, and Walter J. Kohler, Sr. secured $200,000 toward the project from J. Stephen Tripp's bequest in 1925. The cornerstone was laid on Memorial Day 1927 amid a labor dispute at the site, and the building opened in 1928; James Watrous later painted its Paul Bunyan murals, completed in 1936.