A milestone in Madison's history is fast approaching as the city prepares for its 150th birthday in March.
To mark the event, the city is planning two celebrations, one for the weekend of April 7'9 and one to last throughout 2006, according to Rebecca Kasemeyer, who is in charge of the Sesquicentennial festivities.
The April weekend will be a birthday event, Kasemeyer said, beginning with a ribbon cutting by Mayor Dave Cieslewicz and city officials of the past and present.
The weekend will finish up on April 9 with a party for the city, including a sheet cake and activities for children. Celebrations will continue in 2006 with the placing of 12 historic markers around the city at historically- significant sites.
Madison officially became a city in March of 1856, and in the following 150 years the city has seen riots, Vietnam War protests, a KKK march, the country's first fish hatchery and a major bombing.
Historian and Madisonian Stuart Levitan said the sustaining part of Madison is its university.
'The UW is what makes Madison Madison,' he said, 'It's been like that for 150 years.'
According to the Wisconsin Historical Society's web page, the Territorial Legislature of Wisconsin created the 'University of the Territory of Wisconsin' in 1848 and in 1851 the first building of the campus, North Hall, was constructed on what was then known as College Hill.
Levitan said UW-Madison has contributed to the city since its inception. He noted a water purity test in 1880 by a UW student that lead to the development of a municipal water system.
Levitan said Madison is known as a liberal city because of its young, idealistic students.
'Any university town is usually liberal because of students,' Levitan said.
Madison government saw its first taste of liberalism in the early 1970s, Levitan said, with Mayor Paul Soglin, a leader in the Vietnam protest movement on campus in the late 1960s.
Government is not the only part of Madison that has changed and endured. Mitch Feiler of Feiler's Restaurant & Bar is now running the establishment his family opened in 1966.
'The landscape is changing,' Feiler said.
'As the drinking and health outlook change in the city, the restaurant and tavern business is changing too.'
As the commemoration approaches, people of Madison are considering what makes the city special.
'The single most important physical aspect of Madison is the lakes,' Levitan said.
'The most important non-natural thing is the UW.'
