Tommy Washbush
The Churchill Building at 16 N. Carroll Street.
The Churchill Building, at 16 N.Carroll St., was Madison's original skyscraper.
I am happy to see that the Churchill Building will gain an exciting new life as a boutique hotel. For a while it looked like it would fall to the bulldozer.
A few years ago, the building’s owner, Hovde LLC, planned to raze it as part of a mixed-use development that would include the new Wisconsin Historical Society Museum. At the time, Hovde argued that the building just couldn’t be saved.
But the museum project evolved. At one point plans for it even moved off the Capitol Square. When it returned, Hovde rethought the project. The result is that the Churchill Building won’t be just saved, but some of its historic features will be brought back and highlighted in the new hotel.
Built in 1915, it was originally called the Gay Building. On Mifflin Street, across from the Capitol and next door to Grace Episcopal Church, Madison’s first “skyscraper” topped out at only nine stories. It left the sky mostly unscathed, but it did prompt its share of outrage.
Allegedly to protect views of the Capitol, which actually was completed after the Gay Building, the construction of the Churchill prompted ordinances to establish height limits on buildings in the downtown.
That’s a crucial part of Madison history because it literally shaped the city. But it also says something fundamental about our town’s character. We don’t like tall buildings.
In full disclosure, I love the Churchill Building. For several years, when I ran 1000 Friends of Wisconsin, I worked there. My small eighth floor office had one of the building’s narrow windows, facing southeast. I looked down on Grace Episcopal Church and its courtyard. In the spring, the trees there bloomed in beautiful pinks and whites. I could see the southwest quadrant of the Capitol park and in the distance I could just catch a glimpse of the City-County Building, where I hoped to have a new office someday. Some of my happiest moments were spent in both of those buildings and in the few blocks in between them.
But I also loved the Churchill — and still love it — for what it represented: height and density and just a little sense of “big city” urbanity.
One of Madison’s least attractive traits is our hypocrisy when it comes to being urban. On the one hand, everybody’s read Jane Jacobs and everybody understands the value of urban densities — in theory. But in their own backyards, Madisonians have historically wanted to be Mayberry.
Propose a four-story building in this town and you’re asking for a fight. And for about 100 years, after the Gay Building was built, it was a fight you couldn’t often win. All the power was in the neighborhood associations and they wanted to keep their neighborhoods just as they were. Density, of course, was a grand thing — just put it someplace else.
About a decade ago that began to change. As the Republican Legislature took more and more power away from cities, regulatory answers to affordable housing, like inclusionary zoning and rent control, became impossible. It became clear that the only way to deal with the lack of affordable housing was to build more housing of all kinds.
Now there’s still a backlash against too much height and density, but for the most part the backlash is no longer driving policy. Now, it’s pretty much a losing fight to oppose density.
A couple of years ago I was a speaker at the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation’s 50th anniversary celebration. I took the opportunity to challenge my audience by taking them to task for not defending the Gay Building. The Trust did file a petition to landmark the building, but then withdrew it under pressure from the owner.
The Gay Building always presented an uncomfortable fit for the Trust because the organization is generally home to people who fight greater height and density. Back when I was mayor, the Trust was a staunch opponent of the now successful Edgewater Hotel redevelopment, precisely because the new part of that development was going to be too big, in their view.
At the Trust’s anniversary, there was a lot of criticism of all the new apartment buildings in town. Apparently, the architecture is all the same and it's appalling.
I don’t know. I mostly like the new buildings. I think they look fine. My own view is that most architecture should behave itself. It should not draw attention to itself. Buildings should be good citizens. You really want every building to be a Frank Gehry? And do you know what his fees are like? If you want affordable housing it’s not going to be designed by a star architect. Rather, it’s going to be cranked out in workmanlike fashion. Whole cities get built this way. It’s the only way they get built.
One hundred and ten years after the Gay Building first made waves, there’s still a fair amount of distaste expressed for “urban canyons” and buildings that are not built on a “human scale.”
Me, I like those urban canyons. One of my favorite spots in the city these days is the curve where Gorham Street becomes University Avenue. New, tall buildings make that spot feel like a little slice of a big city. It’s true that the sun never shines there, but the sun is overrated. I love that area.
As for “human scale,” what is that, anyway? Manhattan is home to millions of people who seem to do okay amid buildings that make the Churchill look like a townhouse. If that’s an inhuman scale, why do so many humans choose to live there?
I doubt we’ll ever go so far as to eliminate the height limit that the Gay Building inspired. It’s firmly planted in both city ordinances and state law. And I think that’s okay. We’re proving that we can build density and still enjoy Capitol views.
The Gay Building once stood as a symbol of all that Madison detested. Now, it has a new life as a symbol of its future.
Dave Cieslewicz is a Madison- and Upper Peninsula-based writer who served as mayor of Madison from 2003 to 2011. You can read more of his work at Yellow Stripes & Dead Armadillos.
