The expansion doubles the size of the small-animal hospital and triples the area devoted to infectious disease research. School of Veterinary Medicine

The UW School of Veterinary Medicine (SVM) has built a new three-story space — which connects to the existing small-animal clinic — to meet a growing demand for more student learning spaces and veterinary patient care.

SVM was scheduled to open the first two floors of the $174 million expansion in June, doubling the size of the small-animal hospital and tripling the area devoted to infectious disease research. The school is home to 75 percent of the vital infectious-disease research conducted on campus, and it provides quality care for nearly 30,000 veterinary patients per year.

The expansion was made possible by a wide community of benefactors. The project received $90 million from the state, with the remaining support contributed by generous donors such as Debbie Cervenka, a member of the SVM board of visitors. “To be involved and have the ability to provide financial support for this expansion has been a tremendous honor,” says Cervenka. Other contributors include current and former teaching hospital clients, alumni, and pet lovers.

The updated space will greatly expand SVM’s ability to meet the increasing demand for research and care that benefits animals as well as humans. Some of the improvements include research and diagnostic equipment, such as CT, MRI, and PET-CT machines; room for more student learning spaces; an oncology center; and a cardiology suite.

The new facility will house biosafety level 3 lab spaces, which are designed for easy decontamination of potential airborne toxins. According to the Centers for Disease Control, 75 percent of the rising infectious pathogens that affect humans originate in animals, and scientists at the school are on the front lines of investigating infectious diseases such as West Nile encephalitis, avian influenza, and COVID-19.

The 150,000-square-foot construction will also offer student collaboration spaces, acupuncture, internal medicine, general surgery, and an ultrasound suite. The MRI machine is capable of accommodating large and small animals alike.

The third floor of the new building will likely be completed in early 2025, along with an enclosed large-animal arena, remodeled isolation stalls for bovine and equine patients, and renovations to the existing building.

“I can’t wait to see what the future holds for this incredible school,” says Chancellor Jennifer L. Mnookin. “The discoveries and innovations, the graduates who will meet the state’s urgent need for veterinarians, and the compassionate care that will change the lives of our animal patients as well as the lives of the humans who love them.”

The south end zone keeps fans connected to the action in the stands rather than separated into a luxury box. Bryce Richter

At the end of the UW football team’s 2021 home schedule, the athletic department sprang into action. Shortly after staffers cleaned out the last of the debris following the Badgers’ victory over Nebraska, crews moved in and began deconstructing and reconstructing Camp Randall’s south end zone, aiming to have the stadium ready for play again when the 2022 season began nine months later.

In spite of supply chain issues that affected many construction projects, Camp Randall met its schedule. The firm JP Cullen completed its work just ahead of deadline, and the Badgers unveiled their new seating section when Illinois State arrived on September 3. Well, mostly.

“We had one set of basically 150 chairs that were not here for the first game,” says senior associate athletic director Jason King, “but we were able to rent chairs temporarily. And I don’t think, frankly, anyone knew [the correct chairs] weren’t there.”

The south end zone adds a new section of premium seating to the stadium, an area that keeps fans “inside the bowl,” in King’s terms — connected to the action in the stands rather than separated into a luxury box. The new section also connects Camp Randall to the Field House so that fans can experience both of the UW’s historic sports facilities at the same time.

“People are impressed by the Champions Club Bar, which really ties the Field House into the space,” King says. “The backdrop to the bar is actually the facade of the Field House. And above it are the windows that allow you to see from the bar area into the Field House.”

King notes that fans seem intrigued by the new south end zone, but many will have to experience it from afar. Season tickets sold out this year.

The thing about being an undergraduate is, you are not usually tuned in to fine dining. Generally, undergrads have neither the time nor the money to be gourmands.

With the money I saved, though, I would reward myself with a slice of fudge-bottom pie or a Babcock ice cream cone from the Union — or better, a hot fudge sundae if I rode my bike out to Babcock Hall. And every so often, I would invest in a glass of good red wine and a slice of Queen of Sheba cake at the then-reigning monarch of State Street dining, the Ovens of Brittany.

My good friend Becky Harth ’82, who waitressed at the Ovens while in school, remembers the restaurant’s morning buns, as well as other local favorites: “Rocky Rococo slices, sprout and cheese sandwiches on grain bread, and tap beer — never from bottles.” It’s a representative selection from the early 1980s. There are beginnings of locavorism side by side with remnants of hippie dishes and the pizza and beer beloved by 20-year-olds everywhere.

Although UW–Madison doesn’t have a dish named after it, the school has plenty of reasons to distinguish it as a unique culinary zone. And besides, who wants to eat Harvard beets anyway?

In the Beginning

The first dining hall on campus was in South Hall, one of the original dormitories along with North Hall. Scott Seyforth PhD’14, current assistant director of residence life, says the kitchen was overseen by the wife of math professor John Sterling.

Many students, however, lived off campus and would have needed to find food elsewhere. Following a fire in Science Hall in 1884, North and South Halls were taken over for classroom instruction, and there were no dorms for men until the opening of Tripp and Adams in 1926. Women continued living on campus in Ladies Hall, which was later renamed for UW president Paul Chadbourne — in a kind of reprimand by President E. A. Birge, who wanted to punish Chadbourne for his lack of enthusiasm for coeducation on campus. While no official menus or recipes have survived from this earliest era of the UW, it’s reasonable to assume students ate meals the way other Madisonians did during the period. Recipes from early residents were collected by Lynne Watrous Hamel in 1974’s A Taste of Old Madison. In the latter half of the 1800s, soups might range from those familiar today, like black bean, to a corn soup made with plenty of venison — or, barring the availability of that meat, rabbit, squirrel, pigeon, or duck.

Hamel includes a recipe for popovers from President Birge’s wife, Anna; cornmeal/pumpkin pancakes from Emma Curtiss Bascom, wife of president John Bascom; and crullers from the wife of Thomas Chamberlin, who followed Bascom as president. These doughnuts would not be unfamiliar to the decades of students who have haunted the Greenbush Bakery on Regent Street for treats fresh out of the fryer.

Desserts tended to be spice and fruit cakes or fruit pies; cookies were likely to be ginger, oatmeal, or sugar. Chocolate, that staple of today’s desserts, was not produced for the mass market until the late 1800s.

Carson Gulley: Influencer

The next era of UW cuisine begins in December 1926 with the hiring of Carson Gulley as head chef of the new Van Hise Refectory, which opened in conjunction with the first lakeshore dorms that year. Don Halverson MA 1918, then director of dormitories and commons, discovered Gulley working in a resort up north and hired him on the strength of his cooking.

Gulley was influential not just in campus kitchens, where he paid special attention to cook training, but in Madison as a whole. As an African American, he fought Madison segregation laws for years along with his wife, Beatrice, in their attempts to buy a house.

The couple encountered so many barriers that the UW built the Gulleys an apartment in the basement of Tripp Hall before they finally managed to buy a home in the Crestwood subdivision.

He and Beatrice had a pioneering cooking show on Madison television in the 1950s, and many area families and UW graduates still use his method for roasting a turkey — no basting required. Still, Gulley is most often remembered as the creator of the UW’s fudge-bottom pie: a graham-cracker-crusted, vanilla-custard-filled, whipped-cream-topped concoction distinguished by a bottom layer of intense chocolate. Some sources claim the recipe came from two chefs at the Memorial Union, and both the dorm cafeterias and the Union have served the pie for years. As its originator, Gulley wins out in popular memory, and his recipe for the pie is included in his cookbook Seasoning Secrets and Favorite Recipes of Carson Gulley.

Celebrity chef Carson Gulley, creator of the UW’s fudge-bottom pie. UW Archives S15057

Gulley, who died in 1962, was honored when the Van Hise Refectory was renamed Carson Gulley Commons in 1966. It’s now called Carson’s Market within the Carson Gulley Center.

The Mysterious Maizo Salad

Since the Memorial Union opened in 1928, it’s been in the business of serving daily breakfast, lunch, and supper from fast student sustenance to fine dining. For much of the 20th century, the Georgian Grill was a table-service, linen-tablecloth restaurant on the second floor, while Tripp Commons was a cafeteria-style gathering place for faculty and students (in addition to the Rathskeller and the Lakefront Cafeteria on the first floor). Ted Crabb ’54, director of the Memorial Union from 1968 to 2000, says the Georgian Grill was a “very elegant dining room” used to entertain visiting guests and was frequented by the public before theater performances. Faculty would bring their families there for dinner in the evening.

Tripp Commons often saw faculty and their students meeting at lunch, pulling tables together, and “discussing the issues of the day,” says Crabb. “There was a sense of community.”

Many Union menus from Tripp Commons and the Georgian Grill from the 1940s have been saved in the University Archives. Lunches usually included a lighter option like a sandwich or creamed chipped beef on toast, but there were also heartier entrées that could serve as dinner.

Dinners included an entrée, vegetable, fruit, roll, and beverage. Meat was the star of the show — veal, lamb, pork chops, steak, roast beef, chicken. There was the occasional inclusion of smoked beef tongue or one-offs like a chicken liver omelet with creole sauce. Global cuisine was limited to chow mein and “Italian spaghetti with meatballs and parmesan cheese.”

Crabb says the most popular meal at the Georgian Grill was steak, and the most requested dessert was fudge-bottom pie.

Salads were also in rotation. Lots of them. In addition to a spinach salad that wouldn’t be out of place in today’s dining rooms, there was “banana and salted peanut,” “devilled cabbage,” many aspics and gelatins, and some whose ingredients are likely lost to time, like a perplexing “Maizo” salad.

1955 cookbooks with recipes for “veal birds.” UW Archives

Most dishes say “1940s America” more than they say “Wisconsin” specifically, although the state’s cheeses are sometimes called out as part of a menu item. “Fresh red plum with Wisconsin cheese and toasted crackers,” “Wis. blue cheese with t. crax.,” “apple pie with Wisconsin cheese,” and “grilled Wisconsin cheese sandwich” all make appearances. The recipe for the mysterious “veal birds,” an entrée that crops up frequently in the 1940s Union menus, is included in both a 1955 and a 1965 version of a cookbook for Elizabeth Waters Residence Hall. It collected recipes “for all girls of Liz who will wish to recapture an important part of dorm life — mealtime,” as the introduction to the 1955 edition puts it. Veal birds are strips of veal steak stuffed with a bread-cube dressing, rolled, and baked.

Another milestone from midcentury was the Babcock Dairy Store, which was an innovation included in plans for the new Babcock Hall in 1950. The small dairy bar on Linden Drive was intended primarily for campus patrons, as the university did not want its product to compete with commercial ice cream producers.

Comfort Food

Campus dining underwent many changes during the reign of Rheta McCutchin ’56, food service director from 1958 to 2002. In the 1970s, McCutchin was instrumental in creating an eater-friendly, à la carte model. She said the other Big Ten schools thought the UW was crazy for going to individual item choice and pricing, but the system served the university well for many years. McCutchin was also instrumental in making food available at a wider range of hours and introducing more global flavors into the menu.

When Julie Luke began working for dining services in 1985, many of Carson Gulley’s original recipes were still in rotation. “Probably up to 1995 or so, there were a lot of remnants of cuisine that started with Carson,” says Luke, who retired in 2017 as associate director.

By the mid-1990s, though, even modifying the old recipes wasn’t quite working. “That older-style food just wasn’t what the students were looking for,” Luke remembers. “But I think the basics of what Carson stood for — the quality of ingredients, his technique, his commitment to teaching students — have stayed.”

Luke says student favorites tended to be “comfort food,” like macaroni and cheese or mashed potatoes and gravy. And they were good — made from scratch.

Luke mentions a popular mint brownie from the mid-1980s. The minute the words are out of her mouth, that brownie materializes in front of me like the dagger in front of Macbeth. Dense and fudgy, it had a layer of vivid mint-green frosting. A recipe for “Creme de Menthe Bars” is included in McCutchin’s three-ring binders held in Steenbock Library, with the suggestion that green food coloring and extra mint extract can be substituted for the creme de menthe. It sure sounds like the brownie I remember. The bad news for the from-scratch crowd: its base ingredient is Pillsbury Tradition Brownie Fudge Mix.

I was unable to track down another dessert bar I think I remember from that era. It had a sweet crumb crust so caramelized it might as well have been pure brown sugar, topped with a mix of nuts, dried fruits, granola, and chocolate chips. “It was very sweet,” I tell Luke, probably unnecessarily, but she doesn’t recall the dessert. Anybody?

Personal Kitchens

Peter Testory, the current director of dining and culinary services, emphasizes the attention that his team gives to student suggestions when it comes to recipe development. “First and foremost, we continually gather student feedback,” he says. “What are the flavor profiles that they’re looking for?” This evolves constantly with each new group of students.

In the last five years, Testory has seen students looking for bolder and spicier flavors, but interest in food doesn’t stop at how it tastes. “We’ve seen a huge increase in interest in where the food comes from, what manufacturers we have relationships with, and the practices of those manufacturers,” he says. “How do they treat their employees? What humane practices do they have for animals? The whole process.”

That includes a reusable to-go container program. Students exchange a token for the container, which can then be returned to be cleaned. Upon return, the student gets a new token.

Testory sees the dining halls as being students’ “personal kitchens,” and so it is crucial to “make sure that we are in tune with what menu offerings they want.” That can mean the availability of grab-and-go items as well as plenty of options for what looks like an old-fashioned sit-down dinner. Today, boneless chicken wings are one of the most consistently popular items.

Dining areas are now called “markets,” and the choices available are like a cafeteria times four. Stations serve customizable pastas, pizza, noodle bowls, stir fries, and multiple vegetarian and vegan options like dal, black bean burgers, and tempeh with red peppers and broccoli rabe. There’s even vegan beer-battered cod for a traditional — or maybe not so traditional — Friday fish fry.

“We’re starting to see more and more interest in our plant-based vegan and vegetarian options — grain bowls, Beyond burgers, plant-based chicken nuggets and patties,” Testory says.

Yet even though the markets are full of dishes that Carson Gulley might not recognize, such as a barbecue jackfruit sandwich or imam bayildi, there are, too, daily options that could make Gulley — or most alumni — believe they’d been transported back to the campus of an earlier era. Beef sirloin tips. Mashed potatoes and gravy. Roasted brussels sprouts. Herb-crusted pork loin. Homestyle mac ’n’ cheese. And yes, even a slice of fudge-bottom pie now and then.

How to Make UW–Madison’s Fudge Bottom Pie

Ingredients

Crust:

• 4 ounces graham crumbs
• 2 ounces brown sugar
• 2.5 ounces melted butter
• Pinch of salt

Custard:

• 16 ounces whole milk
• 2 teaspoons vanilla
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 5 ounces granulated sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1 ounce cornstarch
• 1 ounce butter (note that this is not mentioned among the ingredients in the video, but do include it!)
• 2 ounces high-quality dark chocolate, chopped

Whipped cream:

• 16 ounces heavy cream
• ¼ cup powdered sugar
• ½ teaspoon vanilla

Garnish:

2 tablespoons of shaved chocolate

Making a fudge-bottom pie with Ruthie Schommer, University Housing pastry chef. Photos by Bryce Richter

To Make the Crust

Combine all ingredients in a small bowl, by hand. Pat down into a standard 9-inch pie pan and bake at 325 for 12 minutes. Cool completely.

To Make the Custard

Combine milk, half the sugar, salt, and vanilla in a saucepan over medium heat. Whisk together cornstarch and sugar in a small bowl, then whisk in eggs. When milk mixture is at a simmer, temper in egg mixture and bring just to a boil, whisking constantly. Remove from heat and whisk in butter until fully incorporated. Strain.

Remove 8 ounces of vanilla custard and combine with the 2 ounces of chopped dark chocolate immediately; the heat of the custard should melt the chocolate.

Cover remaining vanilla custard with plastic wrap, so that the wrap is fully in contact with the surface of the custard, to prevent it from forming a skin. Refrigerate 6-8 hours or overnight before assembling the pie. Cover the chocolate custard likewise and also refrigerate until pie assembly.

To Assemble the Pie

Whip cream, powdered sugar and vanilla in a small mixer bowl fitted with the whisk attachment until light and fluffy.

While the cream is whipping, spread the chocolate custard mixture evenly onto the bottom of the pie crust.

Fold about a quarter of the whipped cream into the vanilla custard, then spread evenly over the chocolate custard layer.

Finally, top with remaining whipped cream. Garnish with shaved chocolate.

Bryce Richter

In May, UW–Madison added its newest campus monument: the Divine Nine Garden Plaza. Designed to honor the achievements and contributions of the nine historically Black fraternities and sororities, the plaza is situated on East Campus Mall and includes nine markers grouped in a circle. Here, members and alumnae of Sigma Gamma Rho pose in front of their sorority’s marker.

Schmitt ventures into the UW steam tunnels to give the rest of us a peek. Bryce Richter

Over the last couple months, writer Preston Schmitt ’14 and photographer Bryce Richter were two of the luckiest people at UW–Madison. They got to visit fascinating corners of campus that are hidden, hard to find, or completely inaccessible to the average person.

But the rest of us are lucky, too, because we can tag along on their journey. “UW Mysteries, Secrets, and Hidden Places” ventures down into tunnels, up into attics, and even out into the woods in search of legendary UW spots. It’s your once-in-a-lifetime chance to explore private areas of the university that coexist with the public ones in a parallel dimension.

“As a student, I’d heard rumors about some of these locations and have always been intrigued by them,” Schmitt says.

To find the shadowy spaces, Schmitt and Richter needed help from UW staff, who not only unlocked doors but also told stories likely to surprise you. Did you know about the charred timber in Bascom Hall’s attic from a devastating 1916 fire? About the Lost City in the Arboretum? About the remnants of a massive glass dome concealed above Memorial Union’s Great Hall?

“In some cases, the institutional knowledge of these places has simply been passed down by generations of UW employees,” Schmitt says. “The documentation that does exist often has to be pieced together through a century’s worth of newspaper and magazine archives.”

So what do we gain from this tour, other than the thrill of peeking behind curtains? By providing historical context for each location, the article significantly enriches our understanding of UW–Madison’s evolution. The next time you stroll through campus, you’ll surely see it with new eyes — and you’ll know that, above your head and beneath your feet, there’s more to this place than you ever dreamed of.

Chazen (with wife Simona) found great joy in introducing new audiences to the art world. Jeff Miller

UW–Madison lost one of its greatest supporters when Jerome Chazen ’48 died in February. The university’s Chazen Museum of Art was renamed for Jerome and Simona Chivian Chazen x’49 when they gave a lead gift that facilitated the museum’s 2011 expansion.

Chancellor Rebecca Blank says that Chazen found great joy in introducing new audiences to the art world and that he “was deeply devoted to the arts and to education.” Museum director Amy Gilman says, “He was a force in every part of his life — business, family, art collecting, philanthropy — and perhaps his most profound legacy will be his everlasting pursuit of his passions.”

Jerry and Simona met while students at UW–Madison. In the 1980s, they became active in what was then the Elvehjem Museum of Art. By 1997 Simona had joined its advisory council. In 2000 the couple made their first gift of art to the museum, Harvey Littleton’s Red Squared Descending Form (1982).

The Chazens have served on the museum’s advisory council for 25 years. They have already given many works of art to the museum, and eventually the UW will hold a large part of their remarkable collection.

Jerry, who majored in economics, credited a UW–Madison art history course with awakening his interest in the visual arts. He earned an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1950 and in 1977 became one of four founding partners of Liz Claiborne, Inc., steering its phenomenal growth and success in the 1980s. He also served as founder and chairman of Chazen Capital Partners, a private equity firm in New York.

At UW–Madison, the Chazens endowed the Chazen Family Distinguished Chair in Art in the School of Education and the Simona and Jerome Chazen Distinguished Chair in Art History in the College of Letters & Science. Jerry served on the board of directors for the Wisconsin Foundation and Alumni Association (WFAA) and received an honorary degree from the university in 2018.

In the words of WFAA CEO Mike Knetter, “Jerry’s gifts to the university and the world go far beyond his philanthropy. He was a great partner, friend, mentor, and role model. I will cherish the memories of Jerry’s wisdom, patience, kindness, smile, and generosity as we care for his legacy at Wisconsin through the Chazen Museum.”

After unexpected construction delays, students returned to spring-semester classes in the new, state-of-the-art Chemistry Building, which includes a nine-story tower that adds much-needed space to the old facility.

More than half of UW–Madison undergraduates take at least one chemistry class, and with the previous inadequate building, some of them were reduced to taking core classes at other universities, while others experienced delays in earning a degree.

The $133 million upgrade, which began in 2018, allows the university to meet an increased demand for courses required by students majoring in STEM fields.

In the above photo, two general chemistry students meet with their TA (at right) in one of the seventh-floor write-up rooms. The remodeled facility accommodates modern computers, equipment, and safety and teaching standards — including more collaborative learning. Every lab has a connected room where students can write up lab results, which they often had to do while sitting in the hallways of the old building. Classrooms and other spaces feature moveable tables, swivel seats, and similar innovations to enhance group work.

Shrey Ramesh x’24, above, operates a rotary evaporator in the Witting Lab for organic chemistry on the building’s eighth floor. The evaporator quickly removes solvents from reaction mixtures by means of a vacuum. The new building provides a number of the valuable evaporators for organic chemistry students. And, Ramesh says, “Going from online labs last semester to this in-person lab was a huge upgrade!” Another building amenity is a “library of the future” where students access information solely online.

It made me wonder about other secret spots on campus, whether remnants of past glory or hidden inner workings. Would there be any way to visit them?

It turns out there is, with special permission (and a lot of keys). So over the course of two months, photographer Bryce Richter and I crisscrossed campus to uncover the stuff of UW legend. Few people have seen these fascinating locations and artifacts — until now. Join us on an exclusive tour of the UW’s hidden places.

The Charred Attic

At 10:15 a.m. on October 10, 1916, a chorus of fire alarms sounded inside Bascom Hall. It’s unclear how the fire started, though early speculation faulted a cigarette butt. Regardless, by 11 a.m., flames were shooting out of the building’s ornate dome as onlookers crowded Bascom Hill. Sections of the dome started to crumble in the blaze.

A 1916 fire destroyed Bascom Hall’s dome. UW Archives

Instructor Oscar Roeseler 1915, MS1916, watching from the Chemistry Building, wrote to his father that “a great sheet of flame shot through the top part of the dome. [It] seemed to lean a little, and then it collapsed, everything disappearing.”

Firefighters and volunteers confined the fire to the collapsed dome and the roof of the fourth floor before extinguishing it. The university erected a temporary roof and planned to ask the legislature to appropriate funds to reconstruct Bascom Hall’s crown. But the United States’ involvement in World War I delayed most construction efforts on campus. By 1921, reports on the project had petered out. A 1930s alumni magazine story stated that “the main structure would no longer support the erection of a heavy addition.” The dome was never replaced. We wanted to see the charred timber that remains in Bascom Hall’s unfinished attic. You can locate this room from the outside — look for the small oval window on the front of Bascom’s portico.

Building manager Lisa Walters ’88 leads us to the fourth floor and a locked door clad with insulation. The wind rustles the creaky rafters as we enter the attic. It’s largely empty, save for some empty shelving, moisture-damaged paperwork, spare lumber, and an abandoned Reebok sneaker. The oval window, framed by student graffiti, affords a singular view of State Street. As we glance up, we see blackened rafters and beams that trace how far the 1916 fire reached. Legend has it that the fire was finally defeated when the eight-ton dome collapsed into a large cistern beneath it. While that water tank did exist, I couldn’t find any contemporary newspaper accounts that confirm such a serendipitous event. The alumni magazine did report that hundreds of students provided “invaluable service in fighting the fire from the roof.”

A Subterranean Network

“Our forefathers who designed this were geniuses from a heating and cooling distribution standpoint,” says Edward Corcoran, steamfitter supervisor for the UW’s Physical Plant. And for him, forefathers is literal — his father, Kevin, held the same job. Who better to guide us around campus’s subterranean system of steam tunnels?

In the late 1890s, the university constructed the first underground tunnels with pipes carrying steam from central heating stations to campus buildings. With the addition of chilled water pipes to provide air conditioning, the tunnel system remains a far more efficient and economical way to heat and cool a sprawling campus compared to installing individual HVAC systems in every building.

Corcoran brings us down to the basement of the Agricultural Bulletin Building, constructed on Observatory Drive in 1899 as the central heating plant for west campus. Down here, we can explore two of the three remaining original brick-lined tunnels.

Before we enter them, we notice a massive black boiler. At the bottom of this relic are heavy steel doors where soot-covered workers once shoveled in coal by the thousands of tons to keep the campus warm. (Today, the steam system is powered by cleaner natural gas.) We then climb a ship ladder to a six-foot-high arched passage heading toward King Hall. When I touch one of the tan bricks, it releases a plume of salt. We hear the hisses of steam and the flow of running water as we navigate through the dark, damp, narrow tunnel. A few cockroaches scatter. Although the pipes are wrapped in four inches of insulation, it’s far warmer down here than it is outside. The ambient air temperature of the tunnels can rise as high as 130 degrees, Corcoran says. We reach a diminutive door at the end of the passage, and I can’t help but marvel at the artful brick arch framing it. I see more craftsman pride down here than in many new homes.

Most of the other brick-lined tunnels have been filled in and replaced with newer concrete tunnels or smaller box conduits. The route has become more efficient, but there are still three and a half miles of walkable tunnels snaking under campus. We head over to a new segment by the Gordon Dining and Event Center that stretches to Langdon Street. By comparison, the new tunnels are remarkably clean, bright, and spacious — not that you should go exploring unsupervised. The tunnels can be extremely dangerous (the steam travels at 425 degrees and 175 pounds per square inch in gauge pressure), and entering the locked passageways is a trespassing violation. We hope our photos satisfy your curiosity. To see how it feels down in the UW steam tunnels, check out this video.

Where Beetles Feast

Perhaps you’ve heard a rumor that six feet beneath Bascom Hill lies a climate-controlled chamber crawling with a colony of flesh-eating beetles.

That’s actually more fact than fable. The only objection you’ll hear from the keepers of this crypt is the descriptor flesh-eating. These tiny dermestid beetles can’t penetrate human skin. “They only like dried jerky,” says graduate researcher Jacki Whisenant ’11, MSx’22. But their appetite for residual meat makes them the perfect helpers for the UW Zoological Museum.

The museum keeps a catalogued collection of more than 500,000 animal specimens spanning the size chart from mussel shells to hippo skulls. Most of the specimens — including extinct species such as the passenger pigeon — are painstakingly preserved with skin or fur intact. But for research and teaching needs, some of them have to be reduced to the bones. And that’s where the beetles come in handy.

The beetles’ home is called the Dermestarium. Its unmarked exterior entrance is near Birge Hall’s Botany Greenhouse. “You wouldn’t notice it unless you were looking for it,” says museum associate director Laura Monahan ’02.

A dark hallway leads to a 300-square-foot arched brick room, where four stainless steel tanks hold the beetles feasting on the animal carcass of the day. They can reach and clean the deepest crevices of bone, finishing their dinner in a few days or weeks, depending on the size of the specimen. Other methods for precise cleaning, such as chemical maceration or boiling, risk damaging the bone. Originally, the Dermestarium space was a magnetic observatory. The university built it in 1876 for $1,200 to conduct research for the U.S. Coast Survey. It was concealed underground and constructed with two feet of dead-air space around it to control temperature for accurate measurements of Earth’s magnetic field. The space was later repurposed for cheese curing and oil storage and as a potato cellar before the zoology department acquired it in 1950. It’s become a perfect home for the picky beetles, which need steady warmth and humidity to survive. The museum staff members speak of them as if they were family — or roommates, as is currently the case for Dianna Krejsa. Nearby construction has temporarily blocked access to the Dermestarium, so the museum curator brought the beetles home.

“They’re on my sunporch with my plants,” she says, “with a humidifier and heater to try to keep them happy.”

The Anatomical Attic

In August 1974, graduate students in the geography department were cleaning out a room in Science Hall when they noticed a trap door to the building’s attic. Trained to be curious, they popped their heads through the opening and saw what they initially thought was a dead chicken. It turned out to be an embalmed human foot.

“[We] thought it was gross and ugly but were not horrified,” Jon Kimerling MS’73, PhD’76 told the Cap Times.

What the steely students had stumbled upon was research material from the attic’s old tenant: the anatomy department, which had moved out of the building in the mid-1950s but apparently left behind a few souvenirs. (A set of leg bones was also discovered in the ’70s and ’80s.) These stories, along with Science Hall’s undeniably spooky Romanesque Revival façade, have made the building a source of intrigue for paranormal enthusiasts.

We don’t count ourselves among the ghost-hunting ranks, but we did want to explore the eerie north-wing attic that welcomed the anatomy department around the turn of the 20th century. Building manager Jay Scholz takes us up to the fifth floor via Science Hall’s antique gold elevator, unlocks a couple of doors, and shows us the deserted space.

The anatomy department moved into Science Hall’s attic at the turn of the 20th century. UW Archives S11727

After the original burned down, the new Science Hall was one of the first buildings in the world constructed largely of masonry and structural steel in 1888. Up here, we can see how the workers crudely cut the Carnegie metal before acetylene torches were available — by drilling a row of jagged holes and bending the beams until they snapped.

In the attic, you can see how the 19th-century workers who constructed Science Hall crudely cut the Carnegie metal before acetylene torches were available.

No one is sure what this space was originally used for. The anatomy department’s dissection labs were on the fourth floor, with a winch that delivered cadavers up from the basement. According to Howard Veregin, the Wisconsin state cartographer, the most famous cadaver to come through Science Hall was that of Julian Carlton, who in 1914 murdered the companion of Frank Lloyd Wright x1890 and several others in the famed architect’s home.

A 1926 alumni magazine article offers some clues to the attic mystery, profiling Professor Arthur Loevenhart’s pharmacology lab, which studied neurosyphilis.

“An unused attic in the very top of the tower of Science Hall has been converted to one of the most attractive laboratories of its kind in the country,” it reported. “Here, a number of strains of trypanosomes … are maintained, as well as a large number of animals infected with syphilis.”

We do find signs of past research activity in the attic. Three rooms contain deteriorating lab benches with old, disconnected gas lines running to them and nearby sink fixtures. I see a storage cubby with the label “Dick Bunge” attached to it. A Google search reveals Richard Bunge ’54, MS’56, MD’60 studied anatomy at the UW and became a renowned professor at the University of Miami.

But much of the mystery of this space remains.

A Theater Hidden in Plain Sight

If you’ve ever sat for a lecture in Bascom Hall’s Room 272 — as Rodney Dangerfield did for a literature class in the movie Back to School — you’ve been to the Bascom Hall Theater. If you didn’t realize it, you’re not alone: the theater’s curtains have been closed for more than 80 years.

On May 18, 1927, the Bascom Hall Theater opened with a production of Outward Bound under the direction of speech professor William Troutman. Recognizing that the UW was lacking the theatrical equipment and space to host dramatic productions, the Board of Regents approved construction of a 414-seat theater with a two-story auditorium in the building’s newer west wing.

The UW’s alumni magazine called it “the finest college playhouse in the Middle West.” Troutman had even larger ambitions for the theater, labeling it “a center for the theater movement in Wisconsin” that will “endeavor to encourage new playwrights not only at the university, but throughout the state.” Students Don Ameche x’31 and Bernardine Flynn ’29 performed at the venue. (During renovations in 2020, workers uncovered graffiti with the future stars’ names.)

Bascom Hall Theater was the UW’s first theater, built in 1927 as “the finest college playhouse in the Middle West.” Wisconsin Historical Society

But by 1937, the alumni magazine was already lamenting the “inadequacy” of the theater. The much larger Memorial Union Theater opened in 1939, effectively decommissioning Bascom Hall as an arts venue. Despite a brief reopening in the late 1940s, the theater space transitioned to a full-time lecture hall.

Today, the biggest hint of the space’s history is the intricate proscenium arch that frames the lecture stage. It’s grander than you’d expect in an ordinary classroom.

But we wanted to see behind the scenes — literally.

Walters leads us to the back of Bascom Hall, through a locked and unlabeled door, to the theater’s original backstage area and fly loft. What’s now an oversized storage closet was once the command room for the university’s first theater.

Immediately, we notice the black spiral staircase leading to catwalks by the ceiling. Around the room’s brick-lined perimeter, original mechanicals are scattered among new wirings and 1980s fraternity graffiti. A slab of drywall permanently covers the area where the curtain once rose and fell.

The theater’s mechanicals are scattered around the original backstage area.

I try to envision the earliest days here, with young stagehands frantically pulling off the university’s first major productions.

“The theater is literally being flooded with hundreds who want to act, scores who want to shift scenery, dozens who want to work props, design costumes, and paint settings,” Troutman wrote proudly in 1928.

And so they coined the theater’s slogan: “Dramatics for all.”

The Concealed Glass Dome

When Memorial Union opened its doors in fall 1928, visitors who entered Great Hall were treated to a churchly view. Suspended 25 feet above the room, a massive Tiffany glass dome sparkled with sunlight. “[The] dominating oval space in the ceiling is made of cathedral hammered glass and illuminated by a skylight above,” the UW’s alumni magazine wrote at the time.

But few visitors alive today have ever seen this work of art. The skylights leaked like a sieve, rendering the dome an instant liability. In the late 1940s, Wisconsin Union staff decided to seal the skylights, plaster under the dome, and remove its glass. If you know where to look in Great Hall today, copper detailing on the ceiling traces the dome’s outline. What’s left of the actual dome has been concealed from public view for nearly 75 years.

So we asked for a look above the ceiling.

Behind a small metal door in the Memorial Union attic lies the original dome.

“We don’t do a lot of tours up here,” says Paul Broadhead, the Wisconsin Union’s assistant director for facilities management. He leads us to the fifth floor, through the Marketing and Graphics Office and a thick, locked door. This surprisingly spacious attic is where Memorial Union’s mechanicals are housed. Climbing down a couple ship ladders, we reach a small metal door. Behind it lies the dome’s 400-square-foot metal frame.

The scale is still impressive, despite the structure’s dusty, rusted, and naked appearance. A small oval pattern lines the outer ring, helping us imagine the intricate glasswork that once made the dome shine. The original swinging doors for the skylights remain, though the opening is covered with plywood and roofed over. A couple sheets of plastic are draped over the dome, offering evidence of past leaks.

“What it’s really become is a structural support element for the plastered ceiling below,” Broadhead says.

There have been unsuccessful efforts in recent years to raise private funds to restore the dome, with estimates as high as $500,000. The most realistic and cost-effective approach, Broadhead says, would be creating an homage to the dome below the existing ceiling rather than attempting to reuse the original frame.

“I don’t think there are very many people left who remember it,” he adds. “The folks who are nostalgic are those who have heard stories about it.”

Madison’s Lost City

Deep in the woods of UW–Madison’s Arboretum lies the hidden history of a utopian subdivision gone wrong, doomed by human greed and swallowed up by Mother Nature. Before its remains became known as the Lost City, the planned community was called Lake Forest — “the greatest piece of work of its kind that has ever been undertaken in Wisconsin,” according to a 1920 Lake Forester promotional newsletter.

Developers Chandler Chapman and Leonard Gay indeed had a grand vision for the 840-acre Lake Forest tract off the southern shore of Lake Wingra. After years of intensive dredging to build up marshland into residential habitat, they sought to create a new type of living community — a “Venice of the North” where urban housing would coexist with spacious parks and playgrounds, spring-fed lagoons, streetcar service, a golf course, and a civic center encircled by businesses. Between 1918 and 1921, the Lake Forest Company poured roadways and constructed single-family homes.

Lake Forest was planned as a Venice of the North: “the greatest piece of work of its kind that has ever been undertaken in Wisconsin.” But all that remains of this house are crumbling concrete steps deep in the woods of the Arboretum.

But today, all that remains of that 1,000-lot planned paradise are some streets, seven still-occupied houses (many of them between Carver and Martin Streets), a brick pump station, and two large craters in the ground of the Lost City Forest.

Consumed by wilderness, the crumbling foundations within the Arboretum are well off trail and extremely hard to find. To protect habitat, the Arboretum offers only one guided tour each year around Halloween. Naturalist educator Kathy Miner ’76, MA’04 took us on an exclusive visit.

Why did the Lake Forest development fail so spectacularly? First, the terrain proved untamable, with concrete roads and foundations sinking into swampy soil. Second, World War I caused a shortage of workers and a rise in the cost of building materials, slowing construction projects. And third, the Madison Bond Company, which underwrote the whole development, defaulted after its president was convicted of mail fraud. By 1922, the development had effectively died.

Our journey to the Lost City begins on Martin Street, which extends into a public trail of the Arboretum. The concrete path, once a boulevard, is a relic of Lake Forest. Eventually, we head off trail, fight through dense thicket, and reach the concrete remains of Capitol Avenue. Now almost entirely covered with leaves and dirt but evident from its raised grading, this was to be the main diagonal roadway that led to the civic center circle and pointed straight to the state capitol.

We follow Capitol Avenue, avoiding branches and stepping over stumps, when a surprisingly square object emerges from nature. Miner climbs on top.

“I am standing on the front steps of the house that once stood at lot 14 Capitol Avenue, Lake Forest,” she announces.

Behind the moss-covered concrete steps is a massive hole with remnants of the home’s poured-concrete foundation and a matching set of back steps. A July 15, 1921, article in the Lake Forester noted of this once-standing abode: “The porches are of concrete; the house is roomy though compact; and the workmanship is excellent throughout.”

Following Capitol Avenue, we reach another set of front steps. This one is sinking unevenly, and behind it are a scattering of cinderblocks and a large, mysterious metal pipe sticking up from the ground. After Lake Forest collapsed around it, this house’s isolated locale made it a perfect speakeasy during Prohibition until it burned down in 1928. The UW acquired large portions of the Lake Forest area between the 1930s and the 1960s after “untangling knotty legal problems,” the alumni magazine reported in 1967.

Developers had a grand vision for the 840-acre tract off the southern shore of Lake Wingra. Wisconsin Historical Society

An initiative kicked off last November to restore the Lost City Forest — now overrun with invasive shrubs like buckthorn and honeysuckle — to its original oak savanna landscape. According to land care manager Michael Hansen, you could practically see through the forest until the 1950s. But clearing the whole area could take decades, so rest assured that the Lost City will remain lost for a while longer.

The Tent Colony

Today, a family living in a university apartment at Eagle Heights would pay at least $962 per month. In 1912, that family could have stayed on campus the whole summer for $5. There was just one catch: you had to pitch a tent. The university’s Tent Colony — colloquially named Camp Gallistella after its beloved on-site supervisors, Albert and Eleanor Gallistel — originally popped up when a group of agriculture students asked to stay along the forested shore of Lake Mendota during summer session. The site west of Frautschi Point (now part of the UW’s Lakeshore Nature Preserve) soon turned into a popular destination for penny-pinchers, especially male schoolteachers pursuing graduate degrees during the summer with wives and children in tow. By the 1930s, there were as many as 65 tent platforms and 300 residents. The stateliest shelters featured light wood framing, tarpaper, and canvas. While the students made the two-mile trip to class by ferry boat, bike, or foot, their spouses attended to chores around camp. The kids enjoyed a classic lake life of swimming, fishing, and boating. The camp considered itself a little city and held elections each year for mayor and other official roles, including treasurer, postmaster, athletics director, aldermen, and newsletter editor. The only comforts provided by the university were two screened and lighted study halls, pit latrines, a hand-operated water pump, and a telephone in the Gallistells’ cottage near the grounds. By 1962, the Gallistells had retired, the infrastructure had fallen into disrepair, and most married students had opted for modern amenities in the new Eagle Heights community across the road. Camp Gallistella closed for good. Perhaps it’s no surprise that such a minimalist sect left behind little for us to see in Tent Colony Woods. Outreach coordinator Bryn Scriver ’97, MS’05 guides us through some of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve’s least-visited paths along the narrow and steep shoreline. It’s hard to imagine that this tranquil forest once vibrated with the activity of hundreds of young families. We embark on a scavenger hunt for slightly-too-square objects. Along the lakeside path, a concrete foundation marks the spot of the old well. In the woods, we find a pair of cement structures that held the outhouses. And by the shore, we locate small concrete and metal pieces from one of the swimming piers.

In the spring, visitors may notice a peculiar plant for the middle of the woods: daylilies. And that’s because Mrs. Gallistel planted them there. •

The silence and isolation of carrel 326 helped our writer finish this article in record time. Bryce Richter

I was too intimidated to study in Memorial Library’s carrels — commonly called the cages — when I was a UW–Madison student. This feels like a legal confession as I sit in carrel 326 in the north stacks writing these words. Above me is exposed ductwork and a fluorescent light. To one side is a concrete-block wall coated in olive green. To the other side is a steel mesh door with spots of rust bleeding through the turquoise paint.

This one doesn’t lock, but some do. A desk, shelves, a wall outlet, a coat hook, a no-smoking decal, and someone’s leftover English literature sticky notes finish the roughly four-foot-by-four-foot metal box. With promised silence and isolation, this is a study spot that has everything a student needs to finish a class paper.

But there’s no way around it: the carrel feels a bit like a jail cell.

Opened in 1953, Memorial Library was the state’s biggest building project since the Wisconsin capitol in 1917. A key feature was constructing some 400 study carrels for graduate students along the perimeter of the massive stacks. By 1955, the cage was all the rage.

“The carrels continue [to be] a popular feature … so much so that, at examination time, stack permits are passed around by students who otherwise could not get in,” stated a library report from the time.

Studying in the confined cubicles has become a rite of passage for generations of students. Two years ago, the Wisconsin Alumni Association put out a call for memories, and dozens of alumni responded with nearly unanimous (though measured) fondness.

“I spent hours in [the carrels] doing my dissertation,” wrote Marie-Louise Mares MA’90, PhD’94. “The faint smell of dry paper in the stacks is my Proustian trigger.”

“I felt locked in, away from the world to concentrate,” added Jane Hillstrom ’80. “They were a necessary-evil experiment in learning.” (Or as Kristin Bergsland Caffrey ’80 concisely described them: “a little creepy but totally quiet.”)

Today, graduate students can apply for one of the 175 locked carrels and reserve it for up to two years, allowing them to safely store weighty tomes. There are also 219 “open carrels” available to any scholar who seeks solitude.

As I take a writing break and check out the carrels in the south stacks, my curiosity turns to envy. These look less like jail cells and more like doctors’ offices. The walls are plastered and painted a pleasant beige. There’s more wood and less metal. I suspect these carrels — and those with windows in the north stacks — are in high demand.

And here’s a final confession, as I pack up from carrel 326: I finished this story in record time.