Madison, Wisconsin

 OK, let me just get this off my chest. I am duly impressed by Frank Lloyd Wright's life and work but I laugh almost every I see one of his houses. And the Madison area has several, so I laughed a lot in Madison.

Frank L. Wright's Unitarian Meeting House

I laugh because he was a typical genius with a major blind spot. He refused to acknowledge how short he was and all his designs have low, traumatic-head-injury-inducing ceilings and no one apparently ever had the courage to point out the obvious problem. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Babcock County Park

We stayed at  the very nice Babcock County Park, named after Stephen Babcock, Wisconsin dairy scientist, known internationally for discovering the method for determining the percentage of butterfat found in milk. If that sounded like I cut and pasted the preceding sentence from the county park's web site, there's a good reason...  I'm sure Mr. Babcock would be proud.

Ramona had some very nice friends in Madison so we stayed 3 nights to make sure we had a chance to see them and also to see some of the Frank Lloyd Wright houses. And, despite my amusement at Mr. Wright's stubborn streak, we were both duly impressed by much of his work. It might not seem groundbreaking now, but it must have been pretty far ahead of his time back when he was convincing people to build his (then-) unusual designs.

 

 

I know nothing about this building but I was very impressed by it. Apparently, it is the US Bank Plaza at 1 South Pinckney St., Madison, WI. It seemed to contain multiple shops, somewhat like a mall. It was in such perfect condition that it looked more like one of those hyper-realistic architectural drawings that look almost real until you see the fake trees and fake people. It also looked incredibly hard to cool in the summer.