History of the Park

The first contributor to Alumni Park was Arthur Peabody.

Peabody was the university architect at the beginning of the 20th century, and it was he who set down the ambition to create a public entrance on the northeast corner of campus — a “lakeshore gateway.”

Working with Warren Powers Laird and Paul Philippe Cret, the Beaux Arts architects who designed the Stock Pavilion, Peabody commissioned the 1908 campus plan, a document that laid out a vision for what was then called Lower Campus, the area between Park and Lake Streets.

The plan “aimed to secure harmony of aspect among the groups through emphasizing their unity as parts of one great University.” Sadly, this vision outstripped available resources, and few of the structures ever came to be. Over the next century, Lower Campus developed in a helter-skelter style, as did the rest of the UW’s buildings and grounds. The dream of a green, welcoming park was deferred again and again.

At various times, UW administrations tried to revive it: in the 1960s, with the creation of the pedestrian-only State Street; in the 1990s; and again in 2005, when then-Chancellor John Wiley MS’65, PhD’68 released his plan for an east campus arts district. This East Campus Mall stretches from the Kohl Center in the south through the Chazen Museum of Art and Library Mall to Memorial Union and the Union Theater. But in 2005 it was merely aspiration — it needed something spectacular to cap the district.

In the fall of 2017, Alumni Park opened and did just that, completing one of the key elements to Peabody’s century-old vision.

Timeline

From prehistory: The shores of Lake Mendota are home to the region’s first inhabitants, as Native Americans occupy the shoreline. Today, the mounds they left behind bear witness to their time here — and UW–Madison claims to have more identified native burial mounds than any other university campus.