cc
to Wednesday Nite at the Lab. >> I'm Tom Zinnen.ne,
I work here at the UW Madison Biotechnology Center.
I also work for UW Extension
behalf of those folks and our other sponsors, Wisconsin Public
Television, Wisconsin Alumni
Alliance, and for tonight Aespecially, the Wisconsince
Veterans Museum, thanks for coming to Wednesday Nite at the
Lab.
night, 50 times a year. For many of Wisconsin's 5.7
million residents no place has
than Camp Randall. more resonance on this campus
Randall Stadium, but before it Most people know it as the Camp
Randall militia grounds, and was a stadium it was the Camp
fair grounds. Tonight, it's my pleasure to be
able to have Daniel Einstein
Randall Memorial Park and Arch, and he's going to tell the saga
going all the way back to the 1850s about this most remarkable
touchstone piece of ground here on campus.
It's a great pleasure to be able
because for about the last 20 years I've been walking by thisc
piece of ground every day on my way to work.
The arch, in particular, has had
It looks fabulous now. worser times than it does now.
maintained as it is today here It has not always been so well
anniversary of the Civil War and in 2012 during the 150th
of the arch which is happening the centennial of the dedication
Daniel Einstein has worked at the UW Facilities Management
Division for nearly 20 years. He's had an ever changing
program management role ranging from campus recycling and tree
inventories to the UW Lakeshore Nature Preserve, and currently
his work focuses on the university's historic
structures, archeological sites,
To put that in context, this and public art installations.
I know of in North America that camhas a continuous record ofes
10,000 years of human habitation, and the guy that
first told me that was Daniel Einstein.
It's a pretty amazing thing to
As part of a team of students, think about that.
contributed to the preparation staff, and consultants, Daniel
landscape inventory of some of of a thousand-page cultural
historic properties. the university's most iconic
including a part on Camp The cultural landscape report,
the Campus Planning and Landscape Architecture website.
Daniel obtained a master's
Institute for Environmental degreeStudies, building onelson
undergraduate studies in
It is a great please to introduce Daniel Einstein to
you, and please join me in
special Wednesday Nite at the welcoming DanLab.to this very
[APPLAUSE]
Hello.
wonderful turnout. Well, thanks, Tom, and this is a
apologizing for the typo on the I guess Inews release.o begin by
My uncle Albert will not be coming.
[LAUGHTER]
As Tom indicated, my job here at So if you'd like to cutout.
and cultural resource manager where I have an opportunity to
engage in research to help
university makes with regard to iour historic properties,
archeological sites, and our
Our presentation tonight is about Camp Randall, and, as Tom
suggested, not the Camp Randall that most people think of when
they hear that place name, but
But the context, the lens through which we will examine
Camp Randall, is a cultural landscape which is a term that
perhaps you're not familiar with.
And by cultural landscape I mean
people, culture, and the land, that relationship between
human decisions, and, in return, and how the land influences
land. What I really enjoy about my job
is that sometimes I get to play history detective, and it allows
me to piece together stories
time and space together to pulling events and people and
But that process is sometimes dlike doing a jigsaw puzzle..
The dog ate one piece, the baby threw something under the couch,
and your best friend has taken a
a location that you know is wrong but you can't convince him
otherwise.
the jigsaw puzzle and you don't Shave all the pieces, you still
have enough information to have an understanding for the place.
That's a lot like history.
the when but we don't know Sometimes we know the who and
can still try and understand how anything about the where, but we
though we don't have all the a place is significant even
If I say something tonight that leaves a hole in the story and
you have that answer, I'd love
The story is seldom complete, and so please let me know if you
have additional information.
Another useful analogy for
something called a palensist, twhich is a word I had to
practice how to say, palensist. Perhaps some of you who came
here tonight from the medieval
[LAUGHTER] times remember...
Animal skins were used to write manuscripts.
And if you were writing a particularly long novel and you
ran out of an animal skin, you
parchment depot and get a couple couldn't go down to the
You could, I suppose, kill some more sheep and wait, but the
more logical approach would be
grab and old parchment and to go into the back room and
the information on that parchment and then writing the
new story on the old manuscript.
is that the old story bleeds What happens sometimes, though,
manuscript. tCultural landscapes are oftennt
like that.
the lines, if you know how to Iflook, you may be able to seen
both the present and the past simultaneously.
So let's start with just
is going to be discussed orienting you to the area that
This is a current campus map. On the top, or north end, we
have University Avenue. Breese Terrace to the west.
Monroe Street and Regent on the east.
The property is dominated on the
recreational sports facilities southern sector by athletics and
engineering campus. There on the east in red is what
we today call Camp Randall
The historical periods that we Memorial Park.
the state fairground, the Civil wilWar training ground, andre
management by the University of Wisconsin.
As you can see, the state fairground bracketed the Civil
War training camp.
before the war and then several years after the war there was a
state fairground
at[NO AUDI O]ll.
What we have here is a 1914 topographic map.
A topographic map is a map that aligns us in a one-dimensional
plane to see three dimensions.
familiar with this will Anrecognize that we havere
concentric contour lines that represent two-foot elevation
change. So our property, once again,
University Avenue on the north
Terrace on the left or the west at the top oside. page, Breese
There are three knolls on this
mention that this is a landscape landscape, and I might also just
those represent sand and gravel that was cessentially.aciers and
But we have a north knoll, a
Keep these in mind as we go through the presentation because
we'll see them again and again. So this first period, the state
fairground, in 1858 Madison hosted the fair for the first
time and hosted it again after
A total of 11 times during this period the state fair was in
Madison.
Madison was 1858, and we have a lithograph here that shows the
location of the facilities.
On the high ground at the south end of the fairground, what do
we have?
This is the focal point of the The fine arts hall.
On the north end of the property state fairground.
drill assembly occurring. wAnd then on the east knoll wery
have an exhibit tent. One of the fun things
that one can do-- Keep talking?
There's a crackle in the online feed.
Okay. It's not me.
The exhibit tent on the east
One of the fun things that we can do with these images is when
we do a high resolution scan, we
finer detail. Along the outside of the state
fairground we have the animal stalls, and in the center
foreground is a fireman's ladder
kind of interesting because comthose sorts of traditionsind
certainly exist in today's state
So here's a close-up view of the fairground environment.
fairground. At the top of the page we get a
better look at the exhibit hall,
one of our great Wisconsin and I just want to mention that
the state fair in 1860 brought a residents, John Muir, attending
time sive and displayed it in cthat exhibit hall, and as ais
consequence was invited to be a student at the university where
he stayed until he dropped out
Wilderness. We can also see in this close-up
a racetrack near the animal stalls, and in the lower
foreground we can see a fire
Here, again, is the north knoll. wagon being pulled by firemen.
detail a military drill. We can start to see in some more
the hill. Don't know what that's doing up
there.
corner is the fireman's ladder And here in the lower left-hand
there are four or five ladders competition, and it appears that
firemen during this competition. that will be scaled by the
Civil War training ground period, which lasted about foure
years.
Governor Alexander Randall At the beginning of the war,
fairground for military requested training.f the state
In his honor, they named the
Apparently he tried to resist but they wouldn't accept that.
During the four-year period that
70,000 people enlisted and the Civil War camp existed, over
And an important distinction organized at Camp Randall.
enlisted and were soldiers needs to be made between
period some of the enlisted men beccame back for a secondar
go-around.
enlisted in the army during the Civil War period in Wisconsin.
70,000 moved through Camp Randall, so roughly
three-quarters of all men who served in the Civil War moved
through Camp Randall, organized and mustered out at the end of
the war.
Randall, many did not return. Statewide, over 12,000 lost
their lives either to disease or
Typically they stayed only a few being killed in action.
before they were moved to the short weeksfront.e a month,
It was an opportunity for them
their weapons, and to engage in to brudimentary drills.rms,
At one time, over a thousand men
period towards the end of the cowar accommodations werethe
available for over 5,000 men at one time in Camp Randall.
One can imagine with that many
resource demands would have been people in such a small area the
popularity of the latrine. significant, not to mention
eventually moved through Camp TweRandall, including severalts
companies of artillery and
This is one of the earliest drawings of the camp in 1862.
John Gaddis, incidentally, has a
experiences as a foot soldier, whole sketch book of his
the Wisconsin Veterans Museum up and some of them can be seen at
The exhibit hall on the south knoll has now transitioned and
has been replaced by
Off in the distance we see the headquarters.
Perhaps they were the Rocky Mountains.
[LAUGHTER]
call today University Heights. Perhaps they were what we would
some of these images to remember It's important when looking at
not reality. that the map or the sketch is
Nonetheless, there we have the Perspective can be distorted.
[LAUGHTER] mountains of western Madison.
ground is a drill ground Along the center of the training
were performed. And at this early stage the
enlistees were being housed in
Let's move to a sketch which I tents.
depiction of the camp, and believe is the most accurate
tonight. that's the handout that you have
evidence that I use to fit And this is the piece of
pieces. It is a measure drawing prepared
by Napoleon Bonaparte Van Slyke,
because he was a prominent whose name you ought to know
of the Civil War he was the Madisquartermaster and wase time
responsible for submitting this plan.
Orient you to this plan.
perspective. It's a little different
University Avenue, and, once Monroe Street, Randall Street,
building on the south knoll. again, we see the headquarters
the General Hospital. The officers' quarters can bee
seen along the northern section of the camp with the enlisted
men's barracks right behind.
Street, is the camp gate, the only way in and out of Campn
Randall.
yard. ANow, some of you are probablyon
wondering if that's the prison
Confederate prisoners of war, and that's a piece of the puzzle
that I haven't quite been able
For those of you that are not familiar with the story, towards
the beginning of the war in 1862
Mississippi River. there was a battle on the
soldiers were captured and sent Thirteto Camp Randall.derate
At the time, they weren't prepared to accommodate those
prisoners, and the story goes that they set up a very hasty
stockade to hold the prisoners. It was spring.
It was cold.
There was a long siege. Many of the men who came to
Madison were already sick with
communicable diseases, and pneumonia or dysentery or other
here in Madison. unfortunately 140 of them died
Cemetery, and that is how today Thewe have the northern mostill
Confederate rest in the country.
prison yard is the location where the Confederates were
confined but I just don't know. Let's move on to a lithograph.
This one from 1864. Monroe Road is here on the left
side of the screen which
An oak woods is represented on connects to Monroe.
we would now call University the west side of the camp which
And then in the foreground, we Heights.
du Chien Railroad, a very convenient transportation link
for the camp that is trying to
people. So troop movements are expedited
by the close proximity of the railroad to the camp.
Here we have an enlargement of
We can start to see, again, the headquarters building on the
south knoll, the parade ground
the railroad. jusAre you starting to see a and
pattern here? The headquarters building on the
most prominent location, and the
For those of you who have spent time on a farm, you probably can
appreciate that when you have animals and lots of people
there's manure. And when it rains, there's mud.
And so where are you going to put your most prominent, you
most important facilities?
Here's the same lithograph. The General Hospital with its
three wings.
two locations. The officers' quarters now in
headquarters. And now comes the time where we
create our own palensist where
the map from 1865 to locate on we overlay a current map with
Camp Randall was located. the Not surprisingly, theinal
headquarters are over by gate number nine where the Wisconsin
Club, that wonderful suite for
The General Hospital is right on the high rollers, can be found.
Congregational Church. top of Breese Terrace near the
located where engineering The offresearch is today.uld be
The camp gate would be located
McClain Center. Interestingly, the basketballe
court at the Shell is where the prison yard might be.
And finally, not surprising, the
football field. After the war, the property was
scraped clean.
were sold off for scrap lumber That is to say, the buildings
reestablished themselves.
Fairs were held once again for
the fair permanently moved eight years until 1892 until
At that time, the Agriculture Society sold the property to
some private investors who had
of the property. interest in residential platting
The GAR is the Grand Army of the This was upsetting to the GAR.
organization representing Repveterans of the Civil War.ns
On the right of the screen is the badge of the GAR, modeled
after the Medal of Honor. One of the most vocal voices in
the GAR was Josiah Rood, whose
Wisconsin Department Patriotic title was Custodian and
title that I had no idea Instructor, which is a great
[LAUGHTER] existed.
it turns out, is kind of a A patriotic instructor,
advocate, teacher, historian, and Josiah Rood is the voice
through which much of the remainder of this
presentation we'll be hearing.
petitioned the state legislature The GAR, with Josiah Rood,
property before it's developed to intervene and purchase the
The legislature responds and for residential plats.
approximately 52 acres. So roughly $500 an acre for the
former military grounds.
the GAR had hoped for, The legislation, despite what
be used for the exclusive use of stipulates that the grounds will
No mention is made of preserving the university.
soldiers who were stationed thethere during the war.the
The university proceeds with its
property for agriculture, athletics, and military drill.
At one time, the university operated an experimental Ag
station in the southwest corner of the property where they grew
pharmaceutical plants, some of
hoped would be a great medicine. which were cannabis which were
No more exhibit hall, no more We headquarters, but clearlyoll.
defined on the landscape. University Heights is similarly
bare. It suggested that the needs, the
firewood needs of the people at Camp Randall exhausted the trees
in the University Heights area. And here in the middle ground is
the first football field and
Any idea where this view was grandstand, built in 1894.
University Hall was the original taken?
1859. And if you think about it, all
of the other lithographs and
perspective to the southwest. They were all done from the dome
on Bascom Hall. Here in 1906 is a landscape
designed by OC Simonds, a famous
Clearly, he has not been given landscape designer.
memorials to the Civil War in any dithis design.nclude
He sites a gymnasium, an ice
relocates or reorients the track hockey rink, tennis courts, and
No memorial to the Civil War and the football field.
Well, that upsets the GAR and vJosiah..
And they, again, go to the
memorial park. legislature and appeal for a
$25,000 for the creation of a monument, and asks the memorials
park commission, made up of GAR members, to delineate the
boundaries of a new park. Here's, in the words of Josiah
Rood, the appeal. And you can sort of hear the
desperation in this old veteran's voice.
Many of his comrades are now in their 70s.
"We ask you not to delay this matter.
The very youngest of that rapidly diminishing army of boys
and young men who rescued our country from disillusion is now
nearing his allotted three score
We are marching rather rapidly and ten.
not be very long before we shall down the sunset slope and will
the river. have gone into the camp beyond
of this memorial, it must be If we are to rejoice in the fact
Well, aside from being a little overwrought and Victorian, I
think it's an interesting appeal.
Here we have the veterans who,
they don't have a place where their legacy can be remembered.
What would Madison be without a controversy?
The Park Commission comes up
opposed by the major newspapers. with a plan which is immediately
State Journal and Richard Lloyd Jones asks for a real artist to
design the arch because, as he
quarry and a tombstone cutter have been hired to do the work.
Instead of the draftsman from the quarry, they renegotiate the
contracts, and the job
Porter, some of you may recognize that name, a local
architect who's responsible with
and Armory. Well, finally, the day comes for
the cornerstone exercises.
At this time, a time capsule is placed in the base of the arch,
and the newspaper article reports that the GAR and the
Women's Relief Corps and the
rules, regulations, and rituals Ladies of in the box.erted their
The Sons of Veterans put their
The university added it's role membership badge.
pictures of the university, of reports from the patrioticith
instructor, photos of Camp
newspapers of the day, the Randall from 1861, as well as
Wisconsin State Journal, and the Milwaukee Sentinel, the
Wouldn't it be cool to be able Madison Democrat.
The other charge for the to get to that time capsule?
boundaries of the park, which commission they did.tablish the
They established a 6-1/2 acre boundary which did not last.
That is to say, by 1954 the athletics department was looking
to build a practice facility and
the established park be given requover to the athleticson of
department. Veterans groups opposed but were
not successful. As a compromise, the building
was named the Memorial Practice building.
Today we refer to is as the Camp
Again, in 1986, the athletics department requested additional
land for construction of the
around when the veterans groups objected, the legislature agreed
to a compromise whereby the polygon marked B was traded for
land on the south end of the
So the boundaries have changed shell marked A.
Well, finally the dedication day twice now since 1913.
The GAR chooses to have an arrives.
of their celebration June 18th encampment and reunion as part
Josiah Rood writes a booklet. And, again, if it weren't for
Josiah Rood, this story would certainly have been lost.
It only took 50 days from that
until the dedication. At this reunion, 560 veterans
show up and hundreds of visitors
and reminiscing about the join in forwartime. schmoozing
Josiah wrote in the dedication
where the old guardhouse used to booklet: On top of the knoll
a tent a hundred feet long, and nearby stood a rest tent put upd
by the Ladies of the GAR. With a piano, chairs, and
rockers even for the weary. At the foot of the hill, the
Ladies of the Relief Corps had
commissary department where we erected a big mess tent with the
included for 25 cents. got excellent meals, ice cream
wartime cannons. Just west of the tents stood two
iconic image of the dedication. AndThe following day whereost
speeches, patriotic anthems,
McKay, one of the park dedicatory prayers by Reverend
Banner was played and the firing commissioners, the Star Spangled
And if you'll indulge me for of a salute.
of a high resolution image I just a moment, when I get a hold
background. The unintentional subjects in a
photograph can sometimes tell you so much more than you
expected. What I want to point out here is
that just beyond the heads of these veterans and their family
members we can see residences on
Right here is the building known the University Heights.
It was one of the first residences in the University
Heights area on Ely Place.
would ever build out at University Heights so far out of
town. [LAUGHTER]
And then adjacent to it is the Gilmore House, built
in 1908, and some of you may
Lloyd Wright airplane house. recognize that as the Frank
By the way, Buell's house was designed by Lew Porter.
So here we have his arch forming
project of his. aWell, nothing goes right wither
this arch, and because of its hasty construction, within years
it shows signs of settling. They try to repair it with the
installation of some anchors. That is not adequate, and by
1919 there is a call for it to
That never happened. be torn down and rebuilt.
plan for the arch can be found, But and it appears that theving
recommendation is to replace the
hollow arch with reinforced interiorconcrete.rk of the
Don't know if that ever happened.
I don't think you need to worry if you walk through it.
Not guaranteeing that.
For those of you that were The statuary on the arch.
dedication photos, you'll notice paying close attention to those
front of the arch. that there are no statues in
not arrived. In their haste, the statues had
Once installed, the two statues, Josiah was not pleased.
man on the right and a veteran, I should say a young enlisted
man on the left and a veteran on
these current images. But it's not just a member ofn
the GAR.
you can see the badge of the GAR Remember on his breast pocket
Turns out that the model for as well as a lapel pin.
the park commissioner himself. this statue is none other than
How's that for a legacy? [LAUGHTER]
Looks like Robert E. Lee.
On the top of the arch
Old Abe was a bald eagle that traveled with the 8th Wisconsin
into 36 battles.
Madison where he gets a well He survives, returns a hero to
in the Capitol. Here he's shown posing on one of
the cannons in the Capitol Park.
fire in the Capitol results in Unfortunately, he dies when a
He's stuffed and placed in the smoke inhalation.
consumed by yet another fire. However, he does live on in the
mascot of the 101st airborne, which was headquartered in
Milwaukee in 1921.
the mascot of the Case You also may remember Old Abe as
They trademarked him right in 1865 and only retired him in the
last few decades. By the way, there was also a
mascot of the 8th Wisconsin,
Why Frank is not on the arch, a I don't know.nk.
[LAUGHTER]
of those history detective So now we come to one
the commemorative objects in stories, one of the mysteries of
How many of you have seen this Camp Randall.
in Camp Randall and have strange little wooden structure
did it get there and how come we wondered what is that and how
Well, I wondered the same thing, don't know anything about it?
uncover what I believe is the and it towhole story. time to
Now, one of the things that art historians and archeologists do
is try and determine the
That is to say, look for the provenance of an object.
Where has it traveled from its object's resume.
The story of the arch is one time of origin until today?
object that has true provenance thto the Civil War camp.an
What's peculiar about this
that there are no doors. particular structure, though, is
if this is a guardhouse, how did You walk around it and you say
No hinges. they get in and out?
Just oak panels. No doorknobs.
little bit closer, on the gable end of the structure you'll
notice in the lower right-hand
lag bolt holding up the panels corner that there is a modern
lower panels appear to be ofhand-wrought iron spikes.he
That gave me a clue that there
structure that had been was sommodified.out this
That and the fact that a
the roof would hardly serve to guardhouse with thin boards on
Well, I found a newspaper article from 1914 that I think
resolves the problem. If you remember, at the end of
the war the buildings of the
A farmer in Madison purchased cawhat was then called the.
guardhouse and hauled it back to
crib. hiWhen he died 50 years later,rn
some of his old war veteran friends remembered that this
structure had come from Camp
back to the newly formed Randall and decided to offer it
The newspaper article describes the structure as being 18 feet
by 40 feet, having a double layer of two-inch oak planks,
fastened with spikes riveted on both ends, with portholes about
two feet apart, check, check, check.
The portholes being four inches wide, eight inches high, and
then the clue that help to
together, the portholes were really bring this whole story
a disorderly to make his escape sized to through them.sible for
All along I was assuming that the guardhouse was the place
that the guards were staying and
the prisoners. not the place where you guard
map as well as the Kurtz If you looked at the Van Slyke
gate to the camp is a building lithograph there, near the main
And so my guess is that is that scales to about 40 feet.
remodeled an artifact, a relic, theand brought back to Camphey
Randall, and it now does not
but it is a representation of what once was at Camp Randall.
The fact that it's located next to the gate also seems to make
sense to me because if this was a place incarcerate the
disorderly, when the enlisted men either left camp with a pass
or without a pass, got drunk, and then tried to come home,
this would be the likely place
get their full punishment. to place them before they could
the cannons at Camp Randall. So let's now talk quickly about
the park, three cannons show up Sin this picture, probably from
1917. Eventually, eight years ago
there were five cannons of which
any provenance associated with I could identify only one with
In front of the shell is located Wisconsin Civil War activities.
to deal with. oThey were mounted on woodenad
carriages that had no provenance.
That is to say, were built
bad replicas for carriages. soDespite maintenance by theas
university, they had rotted.
the curator from the veterans museum and decided that some of
them could stay at the park, but
place for them would be in perhaps the more appropriate
So one of the cannons went to the Kenosha Civil War Museum,
and two of them were transferred
on the Capitol Square. to the Wisconsin Veterans Museum
you send out a news release that When you're moving a cannon and
cannon on campus... there's g[LAUGHTER] a loose
The media love it.
900-pound tube from the carriage, and eventually we
restore it to an all metal
gifted to us by the members of carriage that was generously
the Civil War, the Henry Harden the SonsCamp Number 2.rans of
They also assist us along with
organizations to purchase additional historically accurate
but all metal carriages which will hopefully stand the test of
time. The other cannon story that I'd
like to share with you is the so-called Shiloh cannon.
The Shiloh cannon does have provenance.
That is to say, it was captured in the Battle of Pittsburgh
Landing, another name for the battle at Shiloh, and it was
spiked. That is to say, when an
artillery piece is overrun in the battlefield often what they
will do is disable it by driving
which is that portion of the a spike into the touch hole,
the charge. cYou see, I learned a whole lot
about cannons.
within weeks of the battle. AHere it was engraved with then
words "Captured by the 14th Regiment Wisconsin Volunteers,
Spiked by 1st Lieutenant
That's pretty good provenance. George Stanley."
Wisconsin history, we decided to And because of the importance to
Veterans Museum. move this cannon over to the
you get three really clever machinists from physical plant,,
and they set up a hoist and an
it were five pounds. A-frame, and they moved it as if
you two commemorative plaques that are located on the interior
walls of the arch.
the left side you'll see an accounting of all the regimentsn
that were raised in Wisconsin.
in Milwaukee and Racine. That is, in Madison as well as
panel which ends with a cautionary note, lest we forget.
And I'd like to close now with
is appealing to the legislature. the words of Josiah Rood as he
It's not easy for those of the His time is coming to an end.
how much Camp Randall means to present generation to understand
Because of associations connected with the place, it is
sacred ground.
those who are students at the university, know almost nothing
about it. We old soldier citizens of
Wisconsin do not believe this ought to be.
We believe our future citizens
patriotic traditions and that we should be taught to cherish our
spots that they cannot be should soforgotten.historic
I think Josiah would be glad to know that his arch still stands
a hundred years later.
horrible time in our history and And that we do recall that
made to end slavery. the great sacrifices that were
the arch, think about the boys So next time you pass through
who never returned. And think of Josiah Rood,
who continues to speak to us, lest we forget.
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]