Main & Carroll: Hardware to Software

By Michael Bridgeman

This is the third in an occasional series of posts focusing on a single site and how it has changed over time. Earlier entries have looked at the locations of St. John’s Lutheran Church and Manchester’s Department Store.

 Click image to view full screen.

Main and Carroll Streets, circa 1913 [1]

The intersection of Main and Carroll Streets has long been a prominent site on the Capitol Square. While that’s due partly to the presence of the Park Hotel, it’s also a function of topography. Moving counterclockwise around the capitol, whether on foot or on wheels, the slow rise of Carroll Street enhances the presence of the building at the corner of the square ahead. In Madison’s early years, that was the buff-colored building visible just above the trees on the left side of the postcard view above. This month I look at that building and what has followed it.

Prelude

There were indigenous people here long before James Duane Doty first laid eyes on the isthmus in 1829. “At the time,” writes Stuart Levitan, “several Ho-Chunk villages and camps dotted the area, but not the isthmus proper. The Indians kept cornfields on what would become North Pinckney Street, but the Madison that Doty would plat had no permanent inhabitants.” [a] The city plan he devised would be selected as the capital of the new Wisconsin Territory in 1836. Madison grew slowly at first and then took off in the 1850s.  

The new building stands to the right, circa 1860 [2]

Boom Times

Madison received its city charter in 1856, the same year that Samuel R. Fox had a building erected at the corner of Main and Carroll Streets for his hardware business. [b] Simultaneously, J.P. Atwood erected a building of the same height and design adjacent to the Fox’s new store. The result was a fashionable Italianate commercial block with a bracketed cornice and cast-iron window hoods. The stone-clad façade had nine windows across the upper three stories—the six to the left for the Atwood portion of the building and the three to the right for Fox’s business. The street level storefronts had large display windows framed by decorative cast-iron.

 

The building was ideal for a young, growing city in the middle of the nineteenth century. Fox’s business occupied every level of 29 W. Main St., with heavy blacksmithing items in the basement; hardware, saddles, and guns at street level; and agricultural implements on the three floors above. The Atwood building at 25 and 27 W. Main St. had a restaurant in the basement, street-level retail, and offices on the second and third floors. The fourth story was given over to a ballroom used for dances and military drills. Atwood was a captain in the Governor’s Guard military company in addition to being a lawyer, judge, and unsuccessful candidate for mayor in 1856.

The building in 1912 [3]

Midlife

By 1912 the Atwood and Fox buildings had settled into midlife, fitting nicely among the facades of Main Street when the square was the commercial heart of Madison. The hardware store at the corner, by this time operated by Blied & Schneider, advertised new-fangled refrigerators. The W.W. Warner music store, established here in 1875, was replaced in 1913 by the W.H. Aton Piano Company, which offered musical instruments as well as Talking Machines made by Edison, Victrola, and Columbia. Other tenants included Capital City Commercial College, a Turkish bath, pool hall, plastering contractor, merchant tailor, cigar store, real estate agent, and foot specialist.

 

Wisconsin State Journal March 25,1962 [4]

 

Demise and Demolition

The beginning of the end came in 1949 when city officials ordered removal of the top floors after, it is said, a brick fell to the sidewalk. The Atwood section was reduced to three stories and the original Fox hardware store was trimmed to two, as seen in the newspaper report above. Nonetheless, street level retail continued with a One-Hour Martinizing dry cleaning store, Forbes-Meagher Music in place of the Aton Piano Company, and Wisconsin-Felton Sporting Goods in what was left of the old hardware store on the corner.

Anchor Savings & Loan Association purchased the side-by-side buildings in 1962. In a front-page story in the Wisconsin State Journal, Anchor president Al C. Steinhauer said that “Anchor always has been a Capitol Square institution” and aimed to revitalize the square with their new building. [c] The Wisconsin State Journal editorialized that the plan was “a solid vote of confidence in the downtown area.” [d] Demolition of the 1850s buildings began in March of 1963.

 

Architect’s rendering, 1963 [5]

 

A New Building

Steinhauer went on to say that Anchor’s new home would be “a modernistic and ‘very different’ building.” Accordingly, the architects at Madison’s Flad & Associates devised a contemporary design that brought a new look to the square. The $2 million building was a box faced in insulating glass that was wrapped by a continuous sunscreen (or brise soleil) of precast concrete on the third though eight floors. Anchor bought a surface parking lot across Carroll Street at Doty Street and erected a parking structure connected to the new building by a tunnel. [e]

 Anchor welcomed the public with an open house in September of 1964, an occasion heralded by a 14-page spread in The Capital Times. The savings and loan used four floors of the building as its home office. There were no shops at street level, which was dedicated to teller stations, several staff offices, waiting areas, support spaces, and an elevator lobby. Most of the tower was leased, mostly to professionals in law, accounting, and real estate as well as trade groups, and a few corporate offices.

The Anchor building was expanded to the east in 1976 with an addition that nearly doubled the space of the earlier structure. The design by Flad was seamless, with a vertical slot running up the front and rear facades where the new and old parts of the building met.

 

25 W. Main St. in 2024 [8]

 

Renovation

By 2012, the market for office space had changed and AnchorBank [f] and Urban Land Interests announced plans to renovate the building to upgrade and expand office space and give the nearly 50-year-old building a dramatic facelift. The deteriorating brise soleil was removed and floor plates were extended outward. A surface parking lot at the rear of the building was replaced with new space for offices and retail. The structure was encased in tinted glass, with faceted concave surfaces at front and rear. The unmistakably contemporary design was the work of Valerio Dewalt Train, a Chicago-based architecture firm.

 Just as the design is fitting for the 21st century, so are the businesses that occupy the revitalized building. Old National Bank, which bought AnchorBank in 2016, occupies much of the first floor while Wonderstate Coffee takes up the Carroll Street corner. Zendesk, a customer service software company, took over three floors for its Madison office in 2018. The new 25 W. Main St. also has co-working spaces as well as professional offices. Boulders Climbing Gym is accessed from Doty Street. The old parking structure across Carroll Street was replaced by The Pressman, a mixed-use building with first-floor retail and apartments above. Underground parking serves both The Pressman and 25 W. Main St.

Over 168 years the buildings on Main Street at Carroll Street have enjoyed a prime spot on the Capitol Square. Each building has manifested the architectural style of its times. And each has provided a home to the ever-changing parade of commerce that time, technology, and taste have presented – from hardware to software, from lunches to lattes, from a ballroom to a climbing gym.

 

. . .

 

Notes

[a] Stuart D. Levitan. Madison: The Illustrated Sesquicentennial History, Volume 1, 1856-1931. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wis. 2006. p.3. See also David V. Mollenhoff’s Madison: A History of the Formative Years, Second Edition. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wis. 2003.

[b] Samuel Fox and his wife Lorain were the clients for the house at 510 N. Carroll St. designed by Donnell & Kutzbock. Fox was hit hard by the Panic of 1857. In 1859 he lost his business and the Foxes sold their new house to Napoleon and Annie Van Slyke

[c] “Anchor Buys Two Sites; Will Build on Square.” Wisconsin State Journal, March 25, 1962. p.1. Since 1940, Anchor’s main office was at 2 S. Carroll St., a two-story Streamline Moderne building designed by Law, Law & Potter that still stands.

[d] “Another Gain for Capitol Square.” Wisconsin State Journal. March 27, 1962. p.4.

[e] The structure was my favorite parking ramp in downtown Madison, a study in horizontal solids and voids. It was demolished circa 2017.

[f] The business became AnchorBank in 1992 when it converted from a mutual savings and loan association owned by depositors to a company owned by stockholders.

 

 

Image Credits

[1] Postcard published by E.A. Bishop. Pub., Racine, Wis.

[2] Corner of W. Main and S. Carroll Streets. Wisconsin Historical Society, WHI-24924. Used by permission. By this time, the hardware business was operated by Ramsay & Campbell.

[3] Harry Wilkinson. Pictorial Souvenir of the Police and Fire Departments and Madison, Wisconsin. American Lithographing & Printing Company, Des Moines, Iowa. 1912. n.p.

[4] Wisconsin State Journal. March 25, 1962. p.7. Accessed through Newspapers.com.

[5] The Anchor Log. Anchor Savings & Loan Association, Madison, Wis. 1964. n.p.

[6-10] Photos by Michael Bridgeman

Madison Trust