File:Entrance, State Office Building, Wilson Street, Madison, WI (52745310529).jpg

Built in 1930 and expanded in 1938 and 1959, this Art Deco-style 11-story office building was designed by Arthur Peabody to house various government offices for the State of Wisconsin. The building’s north wing was constructed first, with the central wing being completed in 1938-1939, utilizing funds from the New Deal-era Public Works Administration (PWA), and the south wing in 1956-1959. Despite the long time span from the building’s origins to its completion, very few of the decorative details were changed and remained remarkably consistent despite the rise of the modernist movement and the Art Deco style falling out of favor by the time the south wing was completed, which in most circumstances led to buildings with portions that did not match the original vision. The building was apparently despised by Frank Lloyd Wright, whom called it a “monstrosity to anyone who thinks” and went on to call the City of Madison a “provincial capitol” that was “neither scholarly or gentlemanly.” Nevertheless, the building is a popular and generally well-liked building by the citizens of Madison. The building is the tallest office building in Downtown Madison, owing to its location close to Lake Monona, which includes a two-story podium that has a parking area on the roof, and the building sits right at the 187-foot height limit imposed throughout Downtown Madison to not block views of the State Capitol dome.

The building is faced with gray granite blocks and is E-shaped, with a tall 11-story tower in the center flanked by two wings of six and seven stories that are at equal height, with the adjacent street sloping downwards along the width of the building’s facade. The stone blocks are mostly unadorned, but the building’s east and west wings feature intricately carved reliefs on the spandrel between the first and second floors, in the spandrel between the fourth and fifth floor, in a ribbon on the sixth floor between window openings, and on the parapet, with additional decorative reliefs over the entrance doors and decorative pilasters with acroterions at the top that run between the paired windows on the second, third, and fourth floors. The eleven-story central wing features a band of decorative carved reliefs at the spandrel between the second and third floors, at the spandrel between the sixth and seventh floors, at the spandrel between the eighth and ninth floors, between window openings on the tenth floor, and around the top of the parapet on the tower and on the penthouse, with decorative Egyptian-inspired columns flanking the front entrance, and pilasters between paired windows on the third through eighth floors that terminate at acroterions on the ninth floor. The tower tapers at the eleventh floor to a narrower parapet, with the windows arranged in pairs at recessed portions of the facade that align with the smaller parapet above rather than the larger structure below. The building’s entrance doors are made of bronze with bronze Art Deco-style sconces on the east and west wings and an art deco chandelier at the main entrance at the base of the tower. The main entrance in the tower features a large transom with decorative bronze trim and a carved decorative stone trim surround, decorative lamppost fixtures flanking the window bays on either side of the doorway, featuring shields with the state motto, “Forward,” emblazoned on them, and is somewhat repeated on the west wing, though simplified, with the original entrance in the east wing being the smallest of the three entrances, with only a pair of doors in an unadorned recessed opening The windows on the “shaft” portion of the building’s design composition often feature recessed black-painted spandrel panels, with the windows at the top and bottom not including this feature. The decorative trim work continues around the side of the building and onto the rear facade facing Lake Monona, but is absent from the two light wells that flank the central tower, where portions of the facade are instead faced with buff brick, though still featuring the same fenestration pattern. The two wings also feature recessed penthouses faced in buff brick, with the east wing’s penthouse being added with the 1938-1939 construction of the tower wing and being smaller than the penthouse atop the later west wing.