This week in Downtown
Nothing on Downtown’s calendar for the next two weeks yet.
About Downtown
Downtown Madison sits on the narrow isthmus between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona. In 1836 James Doty laid out the town around a big central square for the capitol, and the next year the Peck family built a log boarding house for the capitol's builders, the first Euro-American home in Madison, in what is now the First Settlement district. The domed Beaux-Arts Capitol, finished in 1917, is still the tallest building in town, because a state law keeps nearby buildings lower than the columns around its dome. On the hill to its north, Mansion Hill keeps the grand 1800s homes that made it the city's first historic district in 1976. Today families shop the Saturday Dane County Farmers' Market around the Capitol Square, walk the pedestrian State Street, and look out over Lake Monona from the rooftop of Frank Lloyd Wright's Monona Terrace.