A rat hole. Obsolete. Unfit. Ugly.
As the wrecking ball looms for the unpopular Mosse Humanities Building on the UW-Madison campus, it’s important to note those less-than-flattering terms weren’t used for that structure. Instead, those were descriptions bandied about for buildings on campus that are now beloved.
That’s the message Arnold Alanen tried to convey Thursday night at the annual awards banquet for the Madison Trust for Historic Preservation. Where the Mosse Humanities Building, 455 N. Park St., sits now is part of a long-term plan for an east campus overhaul. Between that and complaints about the building’s unsuitability, its future looks grim.
The UW-Madison professor of landscape architecture wasn’t so much making a plea to save the building as to give reasons people should respect it just a little bit more.