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Tenney Park

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1900, O. C. Simonds; 1908, John Nolen. 1414 E. Johnson St.
  • (Photograph by Andrew Hope)
  • (Photograph by Andrew Hope)
  • (Photograph by Andrew Hope)
  • (Photograph by Andrew Hope)

Anchoring Sherman Avenue’s lakefront houses at the northeast is the city’s first large urban park, for which development began in 1900. It originated with the Madison Parks and Pleasure Drive Association, which purchased a marshy area at the mouth of the Yahara River. The park expresses the ideals of O. C. Simonds, a pioneer in promulgating a new Prairie Style landscape aesthetic. Simonds arranged native plants and local landscape features in a naturalistic and picturesque manner. The serpentine lagoon symbolized prairie rivers, and the island meadow represented the prairie landscape. Visitors to the park were supposed to admire nature from a path or a boat, but the passive aesthetic experience that Simonds envisioned appealed to few Madisonians. Consequently, in 1908, John Nolen was hired to design areas for more active recreation such as swimming and band concerts. Nolen also refashioned the lagoon’s series of islands into a single ten-acre island.

Writing Credits

Author: 
Marsha Weisiger et al.
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Data

What's Nearby

Sherman Avenue District
Walter and Dorothy Frautschi House
Marquette Bungalows Historic District (Soelch’s Subdivision)
Barrymore Theater (Eastwood Theater)
Fourth Lake Ridge District

Citation

Marsha Weisiger et al., "Tenney Park", [Madison, Wisconsin], SAH Archipedia, eds. Gabrielle Esperdy and Karen Kingsley, Charlottesville: UVaP, 2012—, http://sah-archipedia.org/buildings/WI-01-DA49.

Print Source

Buildings of Wisconsin

Buildings of Wisconsin, Marsha Weisiger and contributors. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017, 467-467.

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