Bascom Hill
Bascom Hill is the iconic main quadrangle that forms the historic core of the University of Wisconsin–Madison campus. It is located on the opposite end of State Street from the Wisconsin State Capitol, and is named after John Bascom, former president of the University of Wisconsin.
The hill is crowned by Bascom Hall, the main administration building for the campus. Near the main entrance to Bascom Hall sits a statue of President Abraham Lincoln. The first university building, North Hall, was constructed on Bascom Hill in 1851 and is still in use by the Department of Political Science. The second building, South Hall, was built in 1855 and is now used by the administration of the University of Wisconsin College of Letters and Science.
In 1974 the area was listed on the National Register of Historic Places as the Bascom Hill Historic District. In addition to the main quadrangle, the district includes historic buildings ranging from the Red Gym to the Wisconsin Historical Society building to the Carillon Tower. The NRHP nomination considers the district "the most historic cluster of institutional buildings in Wisconsin."
Beginnings
Prior to white settlement around 1837, the area that would become Madison was quiet woods and savannahs, swamps and lakes. Woodland people built effigy mounds like the water spirit mound near Washburn Observatory, and their probable descendants the Ho-Chunk called the place Ta-ko-per-ah, meaning "land of the four lakes."On the isthmus between Lakes Mendota and Monona were two hills, drumlins formed about 18,000 years ago by the last glacier. When Madison was selected as Wisconsin Territory's capital in 1836, the top of the eastern hill was reserved for the territorial capitol building, and the state capitol stands there today. The other hill a mile to the west came to be called optimistically "College Hill" around 1838, years before there was any college.
The young city had a cemetery on the hill from 1837 to about 1846, just near where the Lincoln statue now sits. A William Nelson who died of typhoid in 1837 was buried there, the first white man to die in Madison. Most or all burials there have since been relocated.
The location of Wisconsin's capital had been contentious, and the lead promoter of Madison, Judge James Doty, had gained allies and secured their ongoing motivation by selling them wild parcels around the proposed city. One of those parcels was 160 acres on Bascom Hill which was sold to New York Congressman Aaron Vanderpoel in 1838 for $1.25 an acre. In 1848 when the new State of Wisconsin created the university, the state bought the land from Vanderpoel for $15 an acre.
A general plan for the physical university was in place by 1850, with a "Main Edifice" sketched in where Bascom Hall now sits at the top of the hill and a broad open space running east down the hill toward the capitol, with a "North Dorm" and a "South Dorm" on each side and two similar dorms drawn below. That general configuration was apparently laid out by Milwaukee architect John F. Rague, and major elements remain to this day.
But in 1850 it was still only a plan on paper - nothing had been built.
Buildings
The following buildings are listed in the order built. All are contributing properties to the NRHP's Bascom Hill Historic District unless otherwise noted.North Hall (1851)
was the university's first building, constructed where "North Dorm" had been drawn in the general plan, at mid-right in the 1885 engraving. It was designed by John Rague in Federal style, a rather plain, sober architectural style popular before the Civil War. It stands four stories, clad in Madison sandstone - rather similar to dorms of the day at Ann Arbor, Michigan. Construction cost $19,000, and it opened in September 1851. For the first four years it was the only building on campus, so as well as living accommodations for 50 to 65 students, it contained lecture rooms, labs, a library and a chapel. It offered a mess where students could eat for eighty cents per week. Running water was not piped to the dorm floors, so residents had to carry their own water from a well nearby. The building had hot-air central heating from two furnaces, but when fuel became scarce during the Civil War, a stove was put in each room and residents had to procure their own fuel, often cutting trees nearby in what would become Muir Woods. In 1966 the building by itself was named a National Historic Landmark.South Hall (1855)
South Hall followed four years later, located where "South Dorm" had been drawn in the general plan, at mid-left in the 1885 engraving. On the outside it was a twin of North Hall, also designed by John Rague. Inside, the north half of the building was partitioned into a chemical lab, a natural science collection, a library, a philosophical chamber, other common rooms, and student rooms. The south half was dorm rooms and apartments.In those early years, the university was not well-funded. Each new building required approval of funds from the Wisconsin legislature, and in its eagerness to educate and to show that the new state of Wisconsin was on a par with Michigan, the university often overextended itself. "The $20,000 cost of so crippled the University at the time that the purchase of books and apparatus had to be temporarily discontinued and the curriculum limited." Most of the university faculty moved into South Hall with their families, paying roughly $3 per week per person for room and board. Boarding students paid $2 per week. Professor and Mrs. Sterling managed the boarding establishment. Classics professor James Butler later wrote warmly of this era where students and faculty lived close together:
"Through my classes came William Vilas, John C. Spooner, John Muir, Levi Vilas, Dwight Treadway and both the Steins. No foresight or second sight showed me to what acmes these youths were destined to climb. So while entertaining angels unawares, I very composedly eked out their shortcomings, and detected their blunders, like those of ordinary mortals."
In 1856 a Normal School was started in South Hall. When many male students left for the Civil War, women were allowed in to keep the university afloat, and many of them lodged in South Hall starting in 1864. In that year, 119 of the 169 students in the Normal School Department were women, with 229 students in the whole university.
In the early years the curriculum of the university focused on geography, English grammar, Latin and Greek. That curriculum shifted to more practical subjects as years passed. Particularly with the Morrill Act of 1862, the UW began offering instruction in "the agricultural and mechanical arts." In 1884 South Hall became home to the Department of Agriculture and was renamed Agriculture Hall. In 1890 in this building, Stephen Babcock developed the Babcock test for milk fat content.
Bascom Hall (1857)
What is now called Bascom Hall was the university's third major building, filling that prominent central spot which had been called "Main Edifice" on the early plan. The building was designed by Indianapolis architect William Tinsley in Italian Renaissance Revival style, and initially looked as shown in the 1885 drawing - quite different from today - smaller, with the center topped with a tall dome and a semi-circular colonnade facing the capitol. Tinsley's own biographer observed that it was "a handsome and dignified if somewhat pompous, edifice." It was built from 1857 to 1859, and was the first UW building used entirely for instruction. Like South Hall, the building of Bascom left the university financially stressed for years.In early years Bascom Hall was called Main Hall, University Hall, and Old Main. In 1894 the original semi-circular portico was replaced with the current Jeffersonian portico and the dome was enlarged. Wings were added to expand the building in 1899, 1907 and 1926. The Lincoln sculpture was added in front in 1909, a copy of Adolph Weinman's statue in Hodgenville, Kentucky. In 1920 the building's name was changed to Bascom Hall to honor the former UW president.
In 1916 a fire destroyed Bascom's dome. The building had had problems from the start due to inadequate funding - leaks and drafts and poor ventilation. In the first years, students built small fires on the basement floor to keep warm, but it was the dome that caught fire in 1916. Engineering students tried to douse the fire, but the firehoses were rotten. The rest of the building was saved only when the burning dome collapsed into a forgotten water tank beneath.
Ladies Hall (1870, replaced)
Enrollment increased after the Civil War and by the late 1860s the UW's three buildings were again packed. President Chadbourne, who resisted coeducation of women with men, and his administration put it this way: "We need for the young men every particle of room occupied by the young ladies, and to this end, we are in immediate want of a building to use as a Female college." In 1870 the legislature granted the funds, Chicago architect G.P. Randall designed a 3-story building on a raised basement clad in stone, just where Chadbourne Hall sits now, with dorm rooms in one wing and recitation rooms in the other. Women moved in for the 1871–72 school year. It was the first UW building with indoor privies, and the first coed dorm at a public university in the U.S.In 1895-1896 a gymnasium wing was added, and elevators and electric lighting, and the rooms were remodeled, expanding the dorm's capacity to 125. In 1901 Ladies Hall was officially renamed Chadbourne Hall, in ironic honor of the UW president who got it built while opposing coeducation. In 1957 the old building was razed and replaced by the new Chadbourne Hall, which is not included in the Bascom Hill Historic District.