Madison Wisconsin Streamline Moderne: Quisling Towers Apartments at 1 East Gilman Street

 

Photos by Retiring Guy

From the Wisconsin Historical Society Architecture and History Inventory

The Quisling Towers is an apartment building designed in 1937 in the decidedly twentieth-century vocabulary of the Streamline Moderne, which translated the curved industrial shapes of locomotives, automobiles, and other machines into architectural motifs. Its architect was Lawrence Monberg, who was then practicing in Chicago. Constructed of buff brick with Bedford limestone and terracotta trim, the Quisling steps dramatically down the slope of Wisconsin Avenue. As the eye moves up the building's five stories, the façade steps back in tiers, forming open terraces on either side of the central towers. The tower’s curved corners are amplified by rectangular windows that turn the corners and by rounded canopies and terrace walls. This five-story, buff gray brick Art Moderne apartment building is one of three commissions for Dr. Abraham Quisling by Lawrence Monberg.

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