A sign has been sitting at the corner of Lake and University Streets in downtown Madison for years, announcing the site of a new UW-Madison School of Music building.
Now, a large gift from the Wisconsin Rapids-based Mead Witter Foundation will allow the sign to finally come down next fall and construction to begin on a new building that will house both music classrooms and a large concert hall.
“This was proposed before the 2008 financial crisis and we had some wonderful, generous donors, but the fundraising effort stalled out for some time,” Director of Jazz Studies at UW-Madison Johannes Wallmann said. “Even the most optimistic among us thought it might be decades away.”