Unseen Madison

Spring is a good time to see Madison’s public art (including Sid Boyum’s eastside art). We can vouch that this bronze and limestone sundial keeps good time. Where is the sundial located? Answers are due by next Monday (how to play the challenge).

Last week’s photo challenge was about the elegant stone entrance to Spring Trail pond, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in 1926. A decade later the “duck pond” became part of the UW arboretum. In winter, water kept open by spring flow attracts hundreds of mallards and a kingfisher or two. Charles Brown wrote that “This fine spring was known to the Winnebago Indians who camped in early days at this place, as ‘Nibin-nagoo,’ or the trail spring, being on or near an old Indian trail.”

In the 1920s Wright also built a wall across Nakoma Rd. for the Dicksons, new owners of Old Spring Tavern. As Mrs. Dickson remembered, “Frank Lloyd Wright & his stone mason built the stone wall around the place, Frank Lloyd as boss, I can still see him with his old brown leather britches, giving his ideas & council…”

A certain Wisconsin-born architect claims more Madison structures than just a meeting house, boathouse, and Usonian house. He also designed the wall and entrance for a picturesque spring-fed pond. Where is this wall and who is the designer? Answers are due by next Monday (how to play the challenge).

We’ll have more to say about Civil War hero Old Abe, answer to photo challenge #13, later in the week.

The bird perched atop this memorial arch is not simply a decorative flourish (to find out where the arch is, click the photo). In her time she was a famous leader of men and fierce in battle. Today she possesses the modern mark of fame: a Wikipedia page. What is the name of the bird represented here? Answers are due by next Monday (how to play the challenge).

The answer to last week’s challenge is the newly renovated reading room at the state historical society. This Friday and Saturday is an open house to show off the restored 110-year-old library.

Last winter, this ornate turn-of-the-20th-century room was a scaffolded renovation in progress. Now it’s Madison’s classiest place to read or study. An April 23-24 open house will celebrate the new look. What and where is this room? Photo challenge answers are due by next Monday (how to play the challenge).

Last week’s challenge asked about Unseen Madison hero Charles E. Brown (Charlie, as he was affectionately known). Name a Madison effigy mound and Brown likely had a hand in saving it from development. From 1908 to 1944 he recorded and preserved mounds and archaeological sites throughout the state as museum director of the state historical society. For 40 years he was secretary of the Wisconsin Archeological Society, which he founded in 1903.

Charlie Brown also studied Ho-Chunk cultural traditions. Because Ho-Chunks (among other modern tribes) are probable descendants of the mound builders,  Brown helps us understand Wisconsin’s effigy mound landscape. Ho-Chunks in Madison were frequent visitors to Brown’s home, and Brown heard tribal stories by visiting Ho-Chunk friends camped on Lake Wingra (some families camped there seasonally until the 1920s). Learn more about Charles Brown in our Dead Lake Ridge podcast.

This gravestone stands in Forest Hill cemetery, up the hill from effigy mounds saved by the man who was buried here in 1946. In fact, he’s responsible for preserving most of Madison’s remaining mounds. To accomplish that he surveyed the mounds, lobbied (and criticized) city and university officials, appeared on WHA radio, raised money, and wrote letters, pamphlets, scholarly articles, and newspaper stories.

Bob Birmingham, an authority on the effigy mounds of Wisconsin and Madison, says “a biography of [Mr. X] is a book waiting to be written.” Some Madisonians want to name a city park after him. Who is buried here? Answers are due by next Monday (how to play photo challenge).

The woodcock is last week’s answer. Our non-photo challenge: go see the male’s peenting, twittering, chipping aerial display. The peents and chips are vocal, but not the twittering—that’s produced by the male’s first three primary feathers. In Madison, witness the sky dance (as Aldo Leopold called it) at dawn or dusk on the edge of Curtis prairie, near the UW arboretum‘s visitor parking lot.

This Madison neighborhood is kind to its remaining effigy mounds. The small lakefront park here has two mounds, a bear and unknown effigy (sometimes labeled a lynx). Madison’s dense and extensive mound groups are now miniaturized. Before the city expanded, this pair was part of a larger group, including a nearly 600-foot bird effigy. Note the blackened mound from a recent burn stimulating prairie plants. Where is this effigy mound? Answers are due by next Monday (how to play photo challenge).

In effigy mound news, hear former state archaeologist Bob Birmingham talk about his new book on Madison mounds at 2 p.m. on March 21 at the Dean House, home of the Blooming Grove historical society,

The last photo challenge asked how Machinery Row got its name. Located in a rich farm region, Madison became a distribution center for farm equipment. So “Machinery” refers to farm implements, and “Row” to two blocks of farm businesses on Williamson Street, also called Implement Row. See photos of Implement Row in 1918 and 1936. Across the street stood the railroad depot.