Cultural landscape presentation examines campus preservation

The hills, woods and wetlands of the UW–Madison landscape have an ancient history of human occupation. Twelve thousand years before anyone suggested a “college on the hill,” Native Americans called the campus area their home. More recently, Euroamericans came to the shores of Lake Mendota.

Each community has left a landscape legacy.

Indian effigy mounds, monuments recalling the Civil War training ground at Camp Randall, designed landscape spaces such as Henry Mall and Union Terrace, and teaching gardens and research fields are but a few ways that people have given cultural expression to the 900-acre university campus landscape.

On Wednesday, Nov. 10, researchers conducting an inventory of these special campus sites will present their preliminary findings at a public presentation, “UW-Madison’s Cultural Landscape: Preserving Historic and Natural Sites on Campus.”

“The UW–Madison campus is truly a unique place — nowhere else in the world can one find so many Indian effigy mounds and archaeological sites on a university campus. This is an incredible cultural stewardship responsibility,” says Daniel Einstein, a project coordinator from the Facilities Planning and Management division.

Recently, the campus landscape has been influenced by the work of “landscape gardener” O.C. Simonds and the design plans developed by renowned architects Warren P. Laird and Paul P. Cret.

“Many of the campus designs first outlined in Laird and Cret’s General Plan of 1908 can still be seen on campus today,” says Arnold Alanen, a professor in UW–Madison’s landscape architecture department and the lead historian supervising a team of student researchers for the effort. “Henry Mall, with its central open space and flanking buildings, is a lovely example of the City Beautiful movement’s design influence. This is a tremendous teaching and research asset for our students.”

Alanen and landscape architect consultant Brenda Williams of Quinn Evans Architects will present historic photos, design plans and archaeological survey results compiled by the project. Many of these images will be available on a new university library Web site.