The Edgewater is one of the contributing structures within the Mansion Hill Historic District. Listed on the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior, the district is comprised of some 161 historic buildings constructed at the height of the Gilded Age. Yet, most of the area is a residential neighborhood that currently constitutes the most significant gathering of extravagantly designed Victorian-era homes in all of Madison. Most of the 19th-century structures feature a brilliant blend of Queen Anne and Italianate style architecture, although additional art forms—including Prairie School, Second Empire, and Period Revival—appear, as well. Mansion Hill even contains the largest concentration of structures built solely from sandstone mined from local quarries. They were also designed by some of the city’s best architectural firms, including its first, Donnel and Kutzbock. They specifically created a number of buildings that displayed the rarely seen German Romanesque Revival architecture, including the manors of James Richardson and Alexander McDonnell. The very first manor to appear was that of J.T. Clark in 1846, which debuted upon a parcel of land that lined both Wisconsin Avenue and North Butler Street. Now demolished, it marked the beginning of a construction boom that was to last through the American Civil War. Much of this initial construction unfolded during the 1850s, in which nearly half of the contributing buildings first debuted. Among the most outstanding homes developed at the time included the residencies of Lansing Hoyt, Julius T. White, and H.K. Lawrence. By the 1870s, most of the shoreline near North Butler Street and North Park Street contained the gorgeous homes of Madison’s social elite.

Another prolonged episode of development occurred in 1880 and lasted for the next three decades. According to the U.S. Department of the Interior: “Large, high-style homes were built during this period, many of them for the children of the neighborhood’s first residents.” Queen Anne-style architecture soon proliferated throughout the neighborhood, as the grand manors of Doctor Cornelius Harper, Norwegian businessman Halle Steensland, and the wealthy Brown family came to dominate the landscape. But other architectural styles appeared, including another wave of Period Revival style. Around 1910, the character of Mansion Hill started to lose its purely residential character, as students from the nearby University of Wisconsin – Madison began to populate the area. Since the university only offered its on-campus housing to female students at the time, men sought temporary accommodations in the neighborhoods located a few blocks away. Contractors thus began erecting a series of apartment complexes in Mansion Hill to accommodate the university’s student body. Some of those new buildings displayed newer architectural forms, including the Art Moderne style that characterized the façade of The Edgewater. Some of the families that resided in Mansion Hill thus moved away to other areas, including Wingra Park and University Heights. Nevertheless, the architectural integrity of those earlier 19th century structures has largely remained intact, despite recent alterations to their interiors.

The origins of Madison itself harken back to 1836, when the city was originally founded by a former federal judge named James Duane Doty. A prosperous land speculator, Doty acquired significant landholdings in the region following Wisconsin’s organization as a federal territory. He subsequently petitioned the territorial legislature to move its capital to an isthmus he owned between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona. Doty also encouraged the politicians to name the settlement after President James Madison, who had died earlier in the year. The legislature then met in “Madison” throughout the next decade, overseeing the territory’s expansion into an actual state. Businesses finally started settling in the city shortly after Wisconsin’s admittance into the Union in 1848, which was further augmented by the arrival of the railroads a decade later. Among the earliest industries to get underway was food processing, printing, and general manufacturing. (The University of Wisconsin – Madison also contributed greatly to the city’s early economy.) Madison’s population swelled overnight, growing from just a few hundred people in the 1830s, to several thousand some 30 years later. German, Irish, and Norwegian immigrants constituted the largest demographic of settlers to arrive in the mid-1800s, followed by Italians, Greeks, and African Americans. Today, Madison is among the most exciting places to visit in the Midwest, as it is home to countless cultural attractions. The city contains such renowned landmarks like the Olbrich Botanical Gardens, the Chezen Art Museum, and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin East. The Wisconsin State Capitol is also an amazing place to see, for it is filled with beautiful marblework and murals inspired by ancient European art forms. Its dome is even just three feet shy of the one that currently sits atop the U.S. Capitol Building in Washington D.C.

When architect Lawrence Monberg first created The Edgewater on behalf of the Quisling family, he used an offshoot of Art Deco architecture known as the “Art Moderne” for its design. Art Moderne is a close relative to the Art Deco style of architecture that swept through the nation in the 1920s and 1930s. Like its cousin, the form originally emerged from a desire among architects to find architectural inspiration from previous historical examples. It specifically rejected the rustic, minimalism of the Arts & Crafts movement that had emerged around the same time. More importantly, they hoped that their ideas would better reflect the technological advances of the modern age. As such, historians today often consider Art Deco and Art Moderne to be a part of the much wider proliferation of cultural “Modernism” that first manifested at the dawn of the 20th century. Art Deco itself as a style that first became popular in 1922, when Finnish architect Eliel Saarinen submitted the first blueprints that featured the form for contest to develop the headquarters of the Chicago Tribune. While his concept did not win, they were widely publicized, nonetheless. Architects in both North America and Europe soon raced to copy his format, giving birth to Art Deco architecture. The international acceptance of Art Deco had risen so quickly that it was the central theme to the renowned Exposition des Art Decoratifs held in Paris a few years later.

But as the Great Depression surged throughout the United States in the early 1930s, American architects began to question the ostentatious nature of Art Deco design principles. Art Deco used a sleek, linear appearance that embraced ornate geometric decorations like chevrons and zigzags. But with the financial hardships of the depression constraining the budgets of architects worldwide, they started to “streamline” elements of Art Deco architecture into a more modest form. Called “Art Moderne,” this new variation of Art Deco relied upon an aerodynamic “pure-line” concept that reflected the reigning scientific attitudes about motion. The reason for adopting such ideals reflected the perception that modernity was unfolding at an unprecedented rate. Surfaces became plainer, while the exterior ornamentations were largely abandoned in favor of rounded lines and curves. Stucco served as the primary building ingredient for Art Moderne structures, although smooth-faced stone and polychromatic metals were utilized, too. Art Moderne also typically called for smaller structures, which enabled architects to focus more on quality as opposed to quantity. But the geometric shapes of earlier Art Deco designs still appeared within Art Moderne buildings, albeit in a far humbler form. (For instance, towers were also retained to present the Art Deco’s emphasis on vertical design elements.) This approach to the Art Deco movement remained popular for some time, before giving way to the Mid-Century Modern aesthetics of the 1960s.

Lawrence Monberg was among the most prolific architects active in Madison in the early 20th century. Historians today recount that Monberg was a remarkable person with a colorful personality, going as far to state: “Architecture is one of the performing arts, requiring that you convince your clients what is best for them by gentle persuasion, by diplomacy, by performance." Born in Copenhagen, Denmark, he studied the field of architecture in both Paris and the Institute of Technology in Chicago. Monberg and his wife then bought a farm in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and began designing buildings across the state. Monberg’s firm quickly developed a reputation for their versatility, creating blueprints for all sorts of commercial and municipal structures that ranged from shopping centers to theaters. School buildings soon became Monberg’s specialty, who had designed 30 by the time he relocated his operations to Florida in 1970. Among the most notable examples of Monberg’s work was Jefferson High School and Carthage College. He had also worked a bit with the prominent Quisling family, designing such structures like the Madison Quisling Clinic, the Quisling Towers, and The Edgewater during the first half of the century. Monberg eventually died in Florida in 1983.

Bob Hope, comedian and patron of the United Service Organization (USO). 

Jimmy Dorsey, big band leader known for such hits like “Tailspin,” “So Many Times,” and “Pennies from Heaven.”

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Sammy Davis Jr., actor and singer best remembered as being among the most important figures of the Rat Pack.

Bob Marley, musician considered by many to be the pioneer of reggae music.

Liberace, musician known for his extravagant performance in Las Vegas. 

Prime Minister Jawahariai Nehru of India (1947 – 1964)

Prime Minister Indira Ghandi of India (1980 – 1984)

The 14th Dalai Lama