With it's beacon-yellow turret and its faded TAVERN sign, Mickey's is one of Willy Street's landmark buildings. It looks a bit like a dive on the outside but if you venture inside you can order some of the best locally-brewed beer and eat some of the most delicious food to be had in the neighborhood.

Another lovely old building along Williamson Street that's managed to not only hang on over the years, but grow more handsome with age.

I don't know if the King Midas Flour sign is authentic, but it does add a nice touch.

Madison Candy Co.

The building on Williamson Street that is now home to Ground Zero Cafe and the El Dorado Grill was once a candy company, unless the sign's there just to give the building character.

A swirl of freshly-furrowed earth and a blank wall ... all that's left of St. Raphael's cathedral.

Early morning sun on the Jackman Building, downtown Madison

Ivy-Covered Halls

Madison Area Technical College on Carroll Street, downtown Madison.

... city crews continued to cart away lumber from the 150-year-old Gorham Street elm cut down Thursday morning.

Farewell to a Madison Landmark

Work crews dismembered one of the oldest trees in our fair city today, an elm that's stood on Gorham Street for about a hundred and fifty years. (I hope somebody saved a slice of it and counted the rings.)

Ice-glazed trees around Grace Episcopal Church

Gorham Street Castle

This turreted house on Gorham was made from stone salvaged from the demolished Walker Castle. In the AHI database it's even called Walker House (or Frank G. Brown House, they're a little ambivalent about what exactly to call it).

This photo doesn't do justice to the size of it. The upper floors towered over me even while I stood in the middle of the road to snap this picture.

Collins House on Gorham Street

A beautiful old craftsman-style house that was most recently a well-known bed and breakfast. I don't know what it's used for at the moment. It appears to be vacant.

The Suhr Building's distinctive prow marks it as one of the city's "flatirons"
a term that gets overused. I like "wedgie" myself.

As unusual as its shape may be,
the old wedgies are getting lost in the growing skyline of our fair city.

Even with its sandstone flanks glowingly lit by the noonday sun,
the Suhr tends to shrink under the towering Tenney building.

But on her own, she still stands out as obviously very special.

As usual, it's the details that make all the difference.
This little sprout is shooting up from the cornice,
barely visible in the photo above.

When you think of Wisconsin cheese ...

... you should think of this house. Adolph Marschall built this house in 1912 for his family after he got his business, the Marschall Dairy Laboratory, up and running just six years before. Marschall was a Danish chemist whose business extracted and purified rennet, the stuff that curdles milk. An awful lot of rennet, as it turned out. He must have been pretty comfortably well-off by the time he commissioned Claude & Starck to design this Prairie-style mansion on Pinckney Street. I love the staggered roof out front and the set-back entrance to the right, behind the porch. The condition of the place is just a bit rough around the edges but still, considering the condition of other Madison landmarks, not bad at all. I'd move in tomorrow, if I had a million dollars. *sigh*

I never get tired of looking at this old bank on cap square. Everything about it is pleasing to the eye: The proportion and number of the windows, the gentle weathering of the sandstone facade, the colors they've added to the cornice. Whoever the goddess of old buildings is, she's worth every hozannah if she can keep more places like this around.

Willy Street


Russian stacking dolls for the Wisconsin crowd.
You can have the old Packers (with Bart Starr) or the new (Favre).
On display at Escape.

The Apostle Andrew Book Store stands shoulder-to-shoulder with Grampa's Gun Shop.
If it might seem incongruous any other place,
their conjunction is perfectly suited to Willy Street.

I followed My Darling B into the Ace Hardware store on Williamson Street today,
and felt as though I'd stepped out of the way back machine into a store from when I was a kid
-- from the low tin ceiling to the shelves chockablock with everything you could ever need
down to the worn hardwood floors!
I didn't know stores like this still existed.

The city's going to cut this elm tree down this summer,
now that it's infested by Dutch elm disease.
They say it's 150 years old.
You can't find too many elms like this around her any more.

The marquee of the Orpheum on State Street.
That odd-colored digit caught my eye and wouldn't let go
until I photographed it.

A Denizen of State Street.
Looks a little like John Bolton.

This is no simple mash note.
This took a lot longer than scratching "AB [heart] CD" in wet concrete.
First, he had to get hold of a welding machine, and he had to know how to used it, then he had to sneak to the top of the parking ramp in the middle of the night and spend, I dunno, what, like a half-hour zapping that message into galvenized steel.
And just what the heck does it mean, anyway?
Did he add every one of his girlfriend's initials to it, like notches on a bed post?

More detail from the mural on the old Mifflin Street Co-Op

I'm not usually too picky about things like this, but that kid's got at least six fingers on his or her left hand. Then again, maybe those aren't his hands. I thought maybe he was parting the canvas with his hands to peer into the beyond, but maybe not. Maybe he's got the worst case of cauliflower ears ever.