Madison lawyer and real estate developer Charles Buell became a laughing-stock after he built a showy brownstone home for his family on a naked hillside that, at the time, seemed far removed from the rest of civilization.
When the house – designed by the same architects who did the Red Gym and Science Hall for UW-Madison – was built in 1894, it was ridiculed as “Buell’s Folly.” It was the first house, other than a few farmhouses, to be built in the area that would become University Heights. Why would any sane person want to commute from that remote hill to Downtown Madison?
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