Earlier urban renewal initiatives continue to haunt Madison, but housing developments like Bayview show us how we can learn from those mistakes.
Last fall, Chapter, a 10-story apartment building, opened just a few blocks south of the UW–Madison campus. To make room for Chapter’s construction, five buildings were demolished, including Buckingham’s Bar & Grill, which stood on Regent St. for nearly 100 years, one of the last few remaining buildings that had been part of the original Greenbush neighborhood.
Before it was Buckingham’s, the now-demolished structure was the DiSalvo grocery store, a reflection of the once vibrant and diverse Greenbush neighborhood, which, from the late 19th century and the 20th century, was, inhabited primarily by Italian Immigrants, Jewish people and people of color.
To honor this history, Chapter implemented a gallery of photos and informational plaques to acknowledge the now-extinct version of the neighborhood…