Built in 1898, the Dairy Barn is more than just UW–Madison’s “cow palace.” It’s a monument to scientific progress in the field of agriculture. The barn’s silo is one of the first in America designed with a cylindrical structure — an innovation that helped to improve the storage of animal feed. UW professor Franklin Hiram King was the father of the round silo. King had noticed that, when grain went into the corners of storage buildings, it molded. Cylinders have no corners, so cylindrical towers make superior silos. Within a few years of the construction of the UW’s Dairy Barn, cylindrical silos popped up across the state and around the Midwest.

The art for the Badger Pride Wall was created for WAA by Madison illustrator Nate Koehler.