By Siobhan Ryan
The research in this publication was completed as a part of the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Rebecca M. Blank Center for Campus History. The Center seeks to expand and enrich UW–Madison’s historical narrative by centering the voices, experiences, and struggles of marginalized groups. The Center grew out of the Public History Project which culminated in the Sifting & Reckoning physical and digital exhibition in the fall of 2022, curricular tools, an event and lecture series, and a final report. By sharing research, we hope to continue conversations about the history of UW–Madison and discuss how we can all work towards building a more equitable campus community. The nature of historical research is that it will always be incomplete. It is impossible for us to know everything that happened in the past. Therefore, the research in this post is imperfect, as all history is. Our researchers have completed the research below with all of the historical documents available to them at the time of publication.

On January 1, 1959, Louis H. “Buzz” Topp and Ella Boorman Topp moved into their new home at 711 Clymer Place in Madison, Wisconsin. The couple, then in their mid-50s, had just finished construction on the house in 1958. After their youngest daughter was married in 1951, the Topps decided to leave the family home in Monona Bay and move downtown, closer to Louis’s work at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. [1] For more than 30 years, Louis had run a barbershop at the Memorial Union catering mostly to students, staff and faculty of the university. (And he would remain a campus fixture for three more decades, finally retiring in the 1990s in his late 80s or early 90s.) [2]
The Topps’ new home on Clymer Place was a plain, two-story structure in classic mid-century style, with a short white picket fence enclosing a small garden bed at the front. The Topps lived on the the first floor. There were two apartments upstairs, which the couple likely planned to rent to students. [3] Clymer Place was just two blocks south of the campus, making it and the surrounding neighborhood popular among UW–Madison students and staff in the 1950s. Many homeowners leased single rooms, apartments or even operated rooming houses in the area. [4]

But in September 1960, less than two years after moving into their newly built home, the Topps learned that the university would soon acquire and demolish the property to make way for high-rise student dormitories. [5] The UW Regents had just approved the $28 million Southeast Dormitories construction plan, authorizing the university’s first major encroachment into the predominantly privately-owned residential area south of University Avenue. Over the next 10 years, UW-Madison planned to purchase 16 acres of land from private owners, raze nearly 400 buildings, and construct four towering dormitories to house 4,000 students. [6]
It’s hard to imagine single family homes once lining the streets where university landmarks like the Nick, Union South, and Vilas Hall now stand. The landscape has transformed completely in the past six decades, now bearing the features of a typical postwar university campus — brutalist, high-rise academic and residential buildings; pedestrian malls; green space for students to relax and play cornhole or spikeball. But before UW–Madison built the Southeast Dormitories, University Avenue essentially constituted the school’s southern border; aside from Camp Randall, the campus barely crossed this major thoroughfare. In 1960, when the Regents announced the Southeast Dormitories, students comprised only half of the area’s 1,800 residents. Another 900 people, including 135 university staff and faculty, were displaced to make way for student housing. [7]

The Topps were among them. Perhaps they should not have moved into the area. UW–Madison had been eyeing the land south of University Avenue since at least 1946, when the Regents sent letters to property owners sharing their wish to purchase land in the area. [8] But, under pressure from the Wisconsin Legislature, the Regents halted acquisitions in the early 1950s and there was no public indication that the university planned to proceed with its expansion south of University Avenue from then until the Southeast Dormitories announcement in 1960. How could the Topps have known what was to come? Nevertheless, Ella Topp was remarkably evenhanded when she expressed her disappointment to The Capital Times: “I like the neighborhood; it is handy to everything. My husband has the barbershop at the Union and it is convenient for him. I suppose if it is for betterment of student housing, it’s the best thing.”[9]
The Pre-1960s “South Campus”
A land grab on the scale of UW–Madison’s expansion across University Avenue in the 1960s was unthinkable just two decades earlier. In November 1940, the UW president had commissioned a new campus development plan from the Wisconsin State Planning Board. Most notably among their several recommendations, the board urged the Regents against expanding south. The land south of University Avenue was already privately owned and fully developed with houses, apartments, and commercial and industrial properties — acquiring it would be expensive. And the University already owned vast tracts of land north of University Avenue and west of the main campus buildings, which were then only sparsely developed. Expansion south of University Avenue, then, would not only be too costly but was unnecessary for the university’s growth. The Planning Board recommended concentrating new development on the west side of campus while adding some new buildings to the main campus area to accommodate future expansion. [10] The Regents adopted this plan in April 1942. [11]

Despite its proximity to the university, the neighborhood south of University Avenue was largely independent from the school in the 1940s. Primarily residential, the area housed a mix of renters and homeowners. Most residents worked locally, in manufacturing firms in central Madison, in businesses on Regent Street, or on the railway. The neighborhood provided for most people’s daily needs, with grocery stores, a gas station, a drug store, restaurants, and other essential businesses all within walking distance. [12] Camel’s Tavern at 619 University Avenue was a popular meeting place for railway employees after work. [13] People also gathered at each other’s homes, and at Luther Memorial Church and St. Francis House for ward meetings and civic gatherings. [14] The neighborhood bordered UW but had its own identity. [15] The 1940s development plan, had the Regents stuck with it, could have preserved this independent community.
But by 1945, when the Regents next considered the future UW campus, World War II had drastically changed the planning context. [16] Increased high school attainment rates and the postwar GI Bill, which covered tuition for returning soldiers, created unprecedented access to postsecondary education. Universities across the United States were overwhelmed with enrolments and scrambled to accommodate hordes of new students as the war drew to a close. [17] The federal government, observing the speed of this growth and recognizing universities as key institutions in its Cold War arsenal, provided substantial funds to support the expansion of higher education. [18] Wisconsin’s flagship university was no different. Enrollment and research demand surged at UW-Madison after World War II, compounding the university’s existing space constraints. [19]
So, in 1945, the Regents appointed a Campus Planning Commission and asked them to reconsider the 1941 development plan. [20] Unlike the State Planning Board, which had discouraged property acquisitions, the university’s commission recommended a major expansion. The Regents met in May 1946 and agreed to incorporate several city blocks east of Park Street and south of University Avenue into the postwar campus boundary (see below), thus reversing their resolution from 1942. [21] They justified their decision on the basis that postwar enrollments and research demand had far exceeded the 1941 plan’s projections and would likely continue to grow. They also argued the university’s existing land — a long, narrow area bordered by Lake Mendota to the north — could not be redeveloped while maintaining a walkable campus, thus southern expansion was the only viable solution. [22]

The Regents published their decision and asked property owners in the affected areas to consult with UW staff before selling their properties or starting new construction or renovations. [23] University officials moved quickly, purchasing 43 lots in the acquisition areas in the 1946–47 fiscal year, 11 in 1947–48, and six in 1948–49. [24] But the Regents had failed to secure state government support for the expansion. In January 1950, university representatives were hauled before the Fiscal Planning Subcommittee of the Subcommittee on the State Budget of the Legislative Council (try saying that five times fast) to explain, among other things, their reasons for expanding, the property acquisitions process, and whether state appropriations would be used to fund the purchases. UW all but ceased purchasing land in the expansion area during the 1950s in response.
In the meantime, university planners focused on producing a comprehensive campus development plan to secure state government support for expansion. [25] The Regents adopted their suggestions in the form of “The Sketch Plan for the University of Wisconsin at Madison” in 1959. The Sketch Plan identified three key planning areas beyond the existing campus — including, most significantly, around 24 blocks south of University Avenue (equivalent to around one and a half Camp Randalls) that it planned to acquire, raze, and redevelop completely. Within the expansion area, the plan designated around four blocks for UW-owned student housing, which became the Southeast Dormitories. [26] The Sketch Plan was not supposed to be final; it was intended as the first of three planning stages, culminating in a final General Plan for the campus. [27] But as far as I can tell, this was never completed, and the university treated the Sketch Plan as its master plan until 1970, when a new one was produced. [28]

Universities and Urban Renewal in Postwar America
How did UW-Madison’s modest 1940s campus development plan give way to such an ambitious expansion program by 1959? The post-WWII urban planning context provides some explanation.
The Sketch Plan was conceived and adopted during a period of enormous upheaval in American cities, due in large part to fears over the so-called “urban crisis.” [29] The urban crisis refers to the real physical and perceived social decline of American cities in the late 1940s and 1950s. As Black southerners migrated en masse to northern, Midwestern, and western cities, middle-class white residents moved from cities to the suburbs. Owing to the entrenched racism of the period, this population shift alone was considered evidence of an “urban crisis”. But adding to this, disinvestment, job losses, property devaluation, and commercial decline caused significant economic hardship. Cities became widely associated with poverty, social alienation, blight, and crime, spurring urban planners and policymakers to pursue slum clearance and urban renewal as the solution. [30] In practice, these “remedies” simply exacerbated racial and economic stratification.
With postwar higher education enrollments soaring nationwide, university administrators leveraged fears of the urban crisis to fund their campus expansions and drive out Black and brown residents under the guise of rehabilitating inner-city neighborhoods. The University of Chicago, through its “South East Chicago Commission,” successfully lobbied the federal government to fund urban renewal projects on or near college campuses in 1959. [31] As a result, writes urbanist and historian Davarian Baldwin, “universities became the friendly face of urban renewal, masking ruthless policies that bolstered racial segregation.” [32] In one famous example, Columbia University administrators displaced so many Black and Puerto Rican residents from Morningside Heights between the late 1950s and 1960s that they “reversed the population trend of the 1960s, thus engineering the racial anatomy of the neighborhood,” according to historian Stefan Bradley. [33]
It’s important to note that UW-Madison’s expansion south of University Avenue differed from the model established by other universities; the neighborhood UW displaced was almost entirely white. [34] Madison’s “non-white” population — a category that at the time encompassed Black and Jewish residents and immigrants from southern European countries including Italy and Greece — predominantly lived in Greenbush, the neighborhood immediately south of the university’s expansion area. [35] The city of Madison targeted Greenbush for urban renewal in the early 1960s, razing the neighborhood and displacing the predominantly Black and immigrant population and constructing a hospital and apartment buildings in their place. [36]
But the widespread acceptance of university-led redevelopment projects in this period was crucial in laying the foundation for the Southeast Dormitories and UW’s larger southern expansion. As universities bulldozed entire neighborhoods with federal and municipal government support, they normalized an urban planning model that prioritized university expansion over the preservation of urban homes and communities. And, as was almost always the case in these urban university redevelopment projects, weak renter protections meant the most economically vulnerable people were worst affected.
Building the Southeast Dormitories
For a Monday night in the depths of a frigid Wisconsin winter, the State Building Commission’s February 6, 1961 hearing drew quite the crowd. This was its second hearing on UW–Madison’s Southeast Dormitories construction plan. The university sought to acquire and raze 388 buildings on the 16-acre site — including rooming houses, private homes, apartments, shops, bars, and warehouses. [37] In doing so, it would displace 1,800 residents, only half of whom were students who could eventually return once construction was completed.

In the days following the university’s announcement, local homeowners shared their distress with The Capital Times. Architect Hubert Schneider of 216 N. Murray Street said, “I’ve lived here 25 years, and my six sons all graduated from the University of Wisconsin while we’ve lived here. […] My wife and I are approaching retirement age; why should we give it [our home] up?” Gertrude Dooley, who lived and ran a student rooming house at 822 Clymer Place, said, “If the University takes over our house, we have no home. We’ve been here since 1938, and what we earn from renting rooms goes back into the house.” [38]
In January 1961, several more homeowners attended the State Building Commission’s first hearing. With support from Eighth Ward Supervisor Frank Gugel, the group “urged the University to build elsewhere,” or at least provide more time for them to relocate their properties.[39] Gugel suggested the university could construct dormitories on the intramural fields west of the main campus rather than taking over a residential area — as the 1940 Development Plan had proposed. The Commission decided to postpone its decision for a month.
When the Commission met again in February, more than 60 local homeowners attended and voiced “frantic opposition” to the proposal, as a Capital Times reporter described it.[40] The atmosphere was tense. In the course of the hearing, Gugel accused UW President Conrad Elvehjem of calling one of the blocks in the proposed dormitories site a “slum area” in conversation with a real estate agent. (The Wisconsin State Journal reported that Elvehjem “bolted to his feet” and told Gugel, “Prove that, Sir!” in response. Gugel later apologized. [41]) Homeowners implored the commission to reject the proposal or at least give them more time to move. One resident, O.B. Porter, said “There is no place to go. […] It is not our fault the university has exceeded the capacity of its students and it is a problem we shouldn’t be burdened with.” [42] Another resident, Mrs. Schott, had lived at 206 N. Lake Street for 20 years and raised her children there. She said, “My house is old but it’s well built. […] I don’t intend to go out and live in a crackerbox on the fringe of the city.” [43]
After 90 minutes of discussion, the commission voted unanimously to approve construction on the first of the four Southeast Dormitories, prioritizing student housing over the preservation of existing residents’ homes. [44] After the meeting, The Capitol Times reported, “About 65 persons […] left the executive office hearing room and stood around in groups afterwards, reluctant to go home. For many, it meant that their homes and rental property would be bought by the U.W. or taken by eminent domain if they refused to co-operate.” [45]
These 65 homeowners represented just a fraction of residents now facing relocation so the university could expand its student housing availability. Most people living in the Southeast Dormitories site by 1960 were not homeowners or long-term residents. After the Regents announced their intention to expand south of University Avenue in 1946, long-term residents and owner-occupiers had begun to leave, because “Nobody wanted to live on a ‘powder keg.’” [46] Renters, around half of them students, replaced them. Using data from the 1950 Census, a 1961 report found 80 percent of homes in the Southeast Dormitories site and nearby blocks were renter-occupied — a significant increase from the pre-war population. [47] The threat of institutional expansion had gutted the neighborhood long before any new buildings arrived. Fewer and fewer people with an enduring stake in the community remained, leaving the area even more vulnerable to takeover by the university.
This is not to suggest renters had less to lose from the university’s expansion. In May 1961, G. F. Winch wrote from their home at 814 W. Dayton Street, Madison, to The Capital Times. [48] The 800 block of West Dayton Street was scheduled for demolition within the next 18 months to make way for the Southeast Dormitories, so the Winch family would soon be forced to vacate. Winch spoke to the university official in charge of property acquisitions in the area, who said, “the University is very willing to pay the people whose property they are going to utilize, and even to attempt to compensate them for troubles caused.” [49]
But the university only planned to offer this assistance to property owners. The Winch family, like most living in the area, rented their home. The university official told Winch that renters would not receive compensation for the expense and inconvenience of moving even though, as Winch wrote, “It will cost us a terrific amount of trouble and money, too, to move.” [50] The family had intended to stay there for another three years at least. Winch wrote to The Capital Times to express their frustration:
Any community that enjoys the label of “forward-looking” ought at least to relocate, and pay for the relocation of people (even non-property owners) whose rights it otherwise wantonly usurps. The City of Madison will relocate people who will have to move because of urban renewal.
Trying to win a point from the University, or the all-powerful state which handles the University’s business is a good way to learn what it is like to “go fight City Hall.” If there are more renters in our position, I wish you would make yourselves and your complaints heard at the University. Perhaps there is strength in numbers. [51]
Regrettably, Winch’s letter to the newspaper is the only renter’s perspective on the Southeast Dormitories project I found while researching UW–Madison’s expansion. Yet it paints a vivid picture of the situation facing the majority of the nearly 2,000 people who stood in the dormitories’ path. Like the Winches, they would receive no compensation from the university for the acquisition of their houses despite facing significant moving costs, not to mention the distressing prospect of being displaced from their homes. As in the vast majority of midcentury urban redevelopment schemes, the city’s poorest residents were most vulnerable to major redevelopment projects undertaken at the behest — and for the benefit — of vastly wealthier and more powerful institutions. They stood to lose the most and gain the least.
The university moved quickly after securing the State Building Commission’s approval. By May 14, UW–Madison had acquired 21 of the 38 parcels of land that comprised the Southeast Dormitories site and was in talks to purchase nine more. But the owners of the eight remaining parcels were holding out. The Regents, undeterred, authorized condemnation proceedings against the properties standing in their way, giving the owners until June 1 to sell voluntarily.[52] UW–Madison may not have followed the exact model of expansion through urban renewal employed at Columbia or the University of Chicago, but the Regents were evidently willing to use some of the same coercive tactics to secure the land they required for expansion.
UW–Madison opened the last of the four Southeast Dormitories in 1965, five years ahead of schedule. [53] The towering halls represented just a fraction of the university’s postwar expansion in Madison. Between 1960 and 1973, the school constructed 60 new buildings, 24 of which were in the South Campus area. [54] It was “a veritable new golden age” of growth for the university that left its mark on Madison in blonde brick and concrete. [55]
The construction of the Southeast Dormitories and broader South Campus expansion pitted urban homes and a community against the ideal of expanding access to higher education. It was a struggle replicated at universities nationwide, and within a postwar planning context that equated demolition with progress and facilitated universities’ involvement in massive urban renewal projects, the university won. By 1979, South Campus was essentially an institutional neighborhood. The area was 96 percent renter-occupied, with three quarters of residents between 18 and 24 years old, when the 1970 Census was taken. [56] It was a dramatic transformation from the mixed population of renters, owner-occupiers, workers, families, and students who occupied the area in the 1940s and gave the community a sense of identity independent of the institution. [57] The predominantly student population of the 1970s found community within the university, not the neighborhood. [58]The transformation the Regents had set in motion in 1946 was complete.
♦♦♦
Building the Southeast Dormitories blurred the boundaries between UW–Madison and the city of Madison, and the university has tested this boundary in various ways ever since. The dust had barely settled on construction in South Campus when, in February 1980, The Wisconsin State Journal reported, “UW looks south for more housing.” [59] On its surface, the announcement mirrored the Southeast Dormitories proposal. The university was pursuing expansion “to relieve a critical housing shortage near the UW campus.” [60] The Campus Planning Committee proposed redeveloping six city blocks into student housing as part of a wider cooperative development plan between the university and the city for the area south of campus between University Avenue and Regent Street. But there was one key difference: the new apartment-style housing would most likely be “financed by private developers,” not owned by the university. [61]

Officially, UW–Madison’s southern campus border hasn’t expanded significantly from the boundaries established in the 1959 Sketch Plan, but university-oriented development is relentless. While the city faces a critical housing shortage, private developers race to erect luxury student apartments that many students can’t afford. [62] Block by block, these private developments extend the university’s reach into downtown Madison, transforming more neighborhoods into extensions of the campus without the university physically acquiring more land.
Urban universities are driving similar transformations all over the country. Historian Davarian Baldwin calls it “the rise of UniverCities,” i.e., the emergence of universities as key institutions in urban governance, with an increasingly disproportionate influence over life in American cities. [63] Land is not all that’s at stake. As Baldwin writes, “Schools have become the dominant employers, real estate holders, health-care providers, and even policing agents in major cities across the country,” which has “solidifie[d] their political authority over housing costs, labor conditions, and policing practices for everyone living in urban America.” [64] As UW–Madison grows — as it demolishes a student housing cooperative to construct a brand new humanities building, or as it realizes its ambitious West Campus District Plan — we must consider the consequences of expansion alongside the benefits. And we must decide when we’ve had enough endless expansion, because although the mechanics have changed, one variable has remained constant between 1960, 1980, and 2025: the university on Bascom Hill has an insatiable appetite for land.
[1] For clarity, I refer to the University of Wisconsin campus at Madison as UW–Madison throughout this article. However, Louis, Ella and their contemporaries would have called it the University of Wisconsin until around the mid-1960s, because UW–Madison was the original University of Wisconsin campus. The second UW campus (UW–Milwaukee) was founded in the mid-1950s, so sources from before this period, including most of those referenced in this article, generally refer to UW–Madison as the “University of Wisconsin” or UW. (And, just to add to researchers’ confusion, some call UW–Milwaukee “UW–M.”) E. David Cronon and John W. Jenkins, The University of Wisconsin: A History, Volume IV — Renewal to Revolution, 1945–1971 (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1999), 175, https://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/BYSCPJVI6VT5C9C.
[2] I have constructed this narrative based on available sources, with some speculation to fill the gaps. The Capital Times included the Topps’ house in their coverage of buildings in the site of the Southeast Dormitories. The articles quote Ella as “Mrs Louis H. Topp.” As the Memorial Union barber, Louis left traces in the archives. A Channel 3000 news package about the barbershop provided helpful details about his business and working life. I found Ella’s full name and other family details in obituaries for the couple’s three daughters. Per the 1950 Census, Louis and Ella lived with their youngest daughter Mary Ellen at 950 W. Shore St. on Monona Bay. Mary Ellen’s obituary reveals she was married in 1951, so I believe the Topps moved to Clymer Place in the late 1950s as “empty nesters.”
“U. Dorm Project Will Take $70,000 from City in Taxes,” Capital Times, September 12, 1960, UW-Madison Subject Files, uac69, Box 106, Folder 12, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, Wisconsin; “Many Houses, 60 to 70 Years Old, Face Razing to Make Room for U.W.,” Capital Times, September 13, 1960, UW-Madison Subject Files, uac69, Box 106, Folder 12, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, Wisconsin. US Census Bureau, “1950 Census, Wisconsin, Madison, Dane, Enumeration District 72-71,” 1950, 36, https://1950census.archives.gov/. “Throwback Thursday: The Barber in UW–Madison’s Memorial Union [Originally Aired 1988],” News 3 Now (Channel 3000, May 27, 2022), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBE7XIgxEM4; Jeff Iseminger, “Shave and a Haircut,” Wisconsin Week, University of Wisconsin–Madison, August 10, 1988, http://www.jeffiseminger.com/profiles-of-uw-madison/shave-and-a-haircut/; “Mary Ellen Lobb [Obituary],” Dignity Memorial, July 30, 2017, https://www.dignitymemorial.com/obituaries/kansas-city-mo/mary-lobb-7506660; “Jeanne L. Koch [Obituary],” Cress Funeral and Cremation Service, January 9, 2019, http://funeralinnovations.com/obituary/294777/Jeanne-Koch/; “Elizabeth Ann Kaltenberg [Obituary],” The Arizona Republic, January 28, 2005, https://www.legacy.com/us/obituaries/azcentral/name/elizabeth-kaltenberg-obituary?id=27096381.
[3] “Many Houses, 60 to 70 Years Old, Face Razing to Make Room for U.W.”
[4] US Census Bureau, “1950 Census, Wisconsin, Madison, Dane, Enumeration District 72-33,” 1950, 24, https://1950census.archives.gov/. Lucy Baker et al., South Campus Neighborhood Study (Madison, WI: Department of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Wisconsin–Madison, 1979), https://search.library.wisc.edu/catalog/999517040902121.
[5] “Many Houses, 60 to 70 Years Old, Face Razing to Make Room for U.W.”; “U. Dorm Project Will Take $70,000 from City in Taxes.”
[6] “U.W.’s New Dorm Site Now Has 388 Buildings,” Wisconsin State Journal, September 12, 1960; “U. Dorm Project Will Take $70,000 from City in Taxes.”
[7] “U. Dorm Project Will Take $70,000 from City in Taxes.”
[8] “A Summary of Campus Planning: The University of Wisconsin, 1850 to 1954,” n.d., Historical Maps Relating to Campus Development maps, 1850-1956, UA2023/017, Box 5, Folder 1, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, Wisconsin; Baker et al., South Campus Neighborhood Study, 2.
[9] “U. Dorm Project Will Take $70,000 from City in Taxes.”
[10] Wisconsin State Planning Board, A Campus Development Plan for the University of Wisconsin [1941], Bulletin (Wisconsin State Planning Board) (Madison, WI: Wisconsin State Planning Board, 1941).
[11] Interestingly, a document from the University Archives titled “A Summary of Campus Planning: The University of Wisconsin 1850 to 1954,” said the 1941 plan “was revolutionary and was never adopted by the Board of Regents, but a suggestion that a University Planning Commission be established bore fruit a few years later.” However, the minutes from the Regents’ April 1942 meeting confirm that it was “accepted and adopted as a general plan for campus development, subject to corrections from time to time.” University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, “Minutes of the Adjourned Meeting of the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin: April 18, 1942,” April 18, 1942, 6, Record of the meetings of the Regents of the University of Wisconsin, 1848-1971, Series 1/1/1 447-7D1-7, UW Archives, https://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/NYITTKATNEHKR8H; “A Summary of Campus Planning: The University of Wisconsin, 1850 to 1954.”
[12] Baker et al., South Campus Neighborhood Study, 9.
[13] William C. Black, “Camel’s Tavern, 619 University, Full View of Bar [Image 15177],” April 11, 1937, Wisconsin Historical Society Library, https://wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM15177.
[14] I wanted to provide more information about these meetings, but found little in my search of local newspapers and finding aids. With more time, this could be a good path to find more information about the neighborhood before UW’s expansion.
[15] Baker et al., South Campus Neighborhood Study, 9–11.
[16] University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, “Memorandum: The Reasons for the Decision to Expand the University Campus [January 16, 1950],” Minutes of the Postponed Regular Meeting of the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin, October 25, 1952, 1, Record of the meetings of the Regents of the University of Wisconsin, 1848-1971, Series 1/1/1 447-7D1-7, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, Wisconsin, https://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/ZAOLYFQ6AKUOX87.
[17] Steven J. Diner, Universities and Their Cities: Urban Higher Education in America (Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017); John R. Thelin, A History of American Higher Education, 2nd ed (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011).
[18] LaDale C. Winling, Building the Ivory Tower: Universities and Metropolitan Development in the Twentieth Century, Politics and Culture in Modern America (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania press, 2018).
[19] Cronon and Jenkins, The University of Wisconsin: A History, Volume IV — Renewal to Revolution, 1945–1971, 7–55.
[20] University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, “Memorandum: The Reasons for the Decision to Expand the University Campus [January 16, 1950].”
[21] University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, “Memorandum: The Reasons for the Decision to Expand the University Campus [January 16, 1950].”
[22] University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, “Memorandum: The Reasons for the Decision to Expand the University Campus [January 16, 1950].”
[23] University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, “Memorandum: The Reasons for the Decision to Expand the University Campus [January 16, 1950],” 2; Baker et al., South Campus Neighborhood Study.
[24] Baker et al., South Campus Neighborhood Study.
[25] University of Wisconsin Board of Regents, “Memorandum by the Regents of the University of Wisconsin Relating to the Final Report to the Legislative Council on the University of Wisconsin Expansion Program Submitted by the State Budget Committee [September, 1952],” Minutes of the Postponed Regular Meeting of the Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin, October 25, 1952, Record of the meetings of the Regents of the University of Wisconsin, 1848-1971, Series 1/1/1 447-7D1-7, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, Wisconsin, https://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/ZAOLYFQ6AKUOX87.
[26] Department of University Planning and Construction, “The Sketch Plan for the University of Wisconsin at Madison: A First Progress Report on the Development of a General Campus Plan,” December 1958, Board of Regents’ meeting records, 1850–1971, Series 1/1/3, Box 85, Regular Board February 7, 1959, Document 1365, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, Wisconsin.
[27] Department of University Planning and Construction, “The Sketch Plan for the University of Wisconsin at Madison,” 1.
[28] Campus Planning & Landscape Management, “Campus Framework (Master) Plan,” University of Wisconsin–Madison UW–Madison Campus Planning & Landscape Management, accessed April 25, 2024, https://cpla.fpm.wisc.edu/planning/campus-master-plans/.
[29] Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, First Princeton classics edition, Princeton Studies in American Politics: Historical, International, and Comparative Perspectives (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2014).
[30] Francesca Russello Ammon, Bulldozer. Demolition and Clearance of the Postwar Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2016), 5.
[31] Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower, 30.
[32] Davarian L. Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower: How Universities Are Plundering Our Cities, First edition (New York, NY: Bold Type Books, 2021), 30.
[33] Bradley, Harlem vs. Columbia University, 28.
[34] Jack Meltzer Associates, “Report to the University of Wisconsin: Urban Renewal as Related to Campus Expansion Requirements” (March 15, 1961., March 15, 1961), 11, Pamphlet Collection, 23- 453, Wisconsin Historical Society Library, https://search.library.wisc.edu/catalog/9913605545902121.
[35] Stuart D. Levitan, Madison in the Sixties (Madison, WI: Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2018), 9.
[36] Levitan, Madison in the Sixties; Kacie Lucchini Butcher, “Madison, Wisconsin,” in Mapping Inequality: Redlining in New Deal America (Robert K. Nelson and LaDale Winling, Digital Scholarship Lab, n.d.), https://dsl.richmond.edu/panorama/redlining/map/WI/Madison/context#loc=13/43.0709/-89.3886.
[37] “U.W.’s New Dorm Site Now Has 388 Buildings.”
[38] “U. Dorm Project Will Take $70,000 from City in Taxes.”
[39] Aldric Revell, “Owners Fight UW Spread,” Capital Times, January 6, 1961, UW-Madison Subject Files, uac69, Box 106, Folder 12, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, Wisconsin.
[40] Aldric Revell, “Owners’ Protests Ignored,” Capital Times, February 7, 1961, UW-Madison Subject Files, uac69, Box 106, Folder 12, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, Wisconsin.
[41] “Dormitory Plan Approved,” Wisconsin State Journal, February 7, 1961, UW-Madison Subject Files, uac69, Box 106, Folder 12, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, Wisconsin.
[42] “Dormitory Plan Approved.”
[43] “Dormitory Plan Approved.”
[44] “Dormitory Plan Approved.”
[45] Revell, “Owners’ Protests Ignored.”
[46] Baker et al., South Campus Neighborhood Study, 11.
[47] Jack Meltzer Associates, “Report to the University of Wisconsin: Urban Renewal as Related to Campus Expansion Requirements,” 11.
[48] G.F. Winch, “U.W. Area Resident Complains About Property Acquisition,” Capital Times, May 23, 1961, UW-Madison Subject Files, uac69, Box 106, Folder 12, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, Wisconsin.
[49] Winch, “U.W. Area Resident Complains About Property Acquisition.”
[50] Winch, “U.W. Area Resident Complains About Property Acquisition.”
[51] Winch, “U.W. Area Resident Complains About Property Acquisition.”
[52] “Law Suits Approved for Site of New Dorms,” Wisconsin State Journal, May 14, 1961, UW-Madison Subject Files, uac69, Box 106, Folder 12, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, Wisconsin.
[53] Jim Feldman, “The Buildings of the University of Wisconsin” (1997), 362–65, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, Wisconsin, https://digital.library.wisc.edu/1711.dl/HR5KYLU44F7DU85.
[54] Feldman, “The Buildings of the University of Wisconsin,” 501–6.
[55] Cronon and Jenkins, The University of Wisconsin: A History, Volume IV — Renewal to Revolution, 1945–1971, 210.
[56] Baker et al., South Campus Neighborhood Study, 13.
[57] Baker et al., South Campus Neighborhood Study, 12.
[58] Baker et al., South Campus Neighborhood Study, 1–2.
[59] Allen Mundth, “UW Looks South for More Housing,” Wisconsin State Journal, February 11, 1980, UW-Madison Subject Files, uac69, Box 106, Folder 7, University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives, Madison, Wisconsin.
[60] Mundth, “UW Looks South for More Housing.”
[61] Mundth, “UW Looks South for More Housing.”
[62] For more information, see: Kate Reuscher, “Is affordable student housing a myth?,” The Daily Cardinal, 29 February 2024, https://www.dailycardinal.com/article/2024/02/is-affordable-student-housing-a-myth?ct=content_open&cv=cbox_latest; Ella Hanley, “New study reveals students struggle with rent costs and housing close to campus,” The Daily Cardinal, 11 September 2024, https://www.dailycardinal.com/article/2024/09/new-study-reveals-students-struggle-with-rent-costs-and-housing-close-to-campus; Francesca Pica, “‘No choice:’ Madison council flips to yes on ‘luxury’ student housing,” The Cap Times, 13 July 2023, https://captimes.com/news/no-choice-madison-council-flips-to-yes-on-luxury-student-housing/article_77725993-956f-534a-ac93-d117b19430fb.html.
[63] Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower, 6.
[64] Baldwin, In the Shadow of the Ivory Tower, 5–6.