Your Daily Guide

🚨 City Council Votes To Fire Police Monitor: By a vote of xx-xx, the Madison City Council terminated the contract of Interim Independent Police Monitor Aeiramique Glass effective immediately. The decision Tuesday night came after hours of public comment and a protest outside the City-County building in support of Glass.

• The council’s Chief of Staff, Karen Kapusta-Pofahl, will serve as interim monitor until a permanent replacement is found. [XXX]

🍺 Delta Beer Lab To Close: Citing rising costs and declining consumer spending, Delta Beer Lab announced it will close its Badger Road taproom Sunday and cease operations. The brewery intends to go out with a bang with events this week, and then stay open for limited hours next week to sell off its remaining packaged inventory. [News 3]

🏥 UW Health Expands East Madison Hospital: To meet rising demand, UW Health is adding a $140 million, 120,000-square-foot addition to its East Madison hospital on Eastpark Boulevard. The addition, which will allow for the hospital to do 30% more surgeries, will open Nov. 2. [Cap Times]

🏫 Anana, Crestwood Schools Will Be Rebuilt: After originally planning to renovate Milele Chikasa Anana and Crestwood elementary schools as part of its 2024 facilities referendum, the Madison school district now plans to completely rebuild those schools. The district plans to use interest earnings from the referendum to pay for the increased costs. [Madison365]

🎒 Regents OK Two New UW-Madison Dorms: With UW-Madison operating at a 115% student capacity rate, the Universities of Wisconsin Board of Regents has approved the construction of two new residence halls. If approved by the State Building Commission and the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, construction would start next June, with the new dorms open in fall 2029. [Cap Times]

🌍 Madison Makes Nat Geo’s Best of the World List: National Geographic Magazine put Madison on its list of “Best of the World 2027,” celebrating its mix of urban and outdoor experiences. The list of 25 must-visit destinations also includes Melbourne, Australia and Luxor, Egypt.

• Simply the Best! On the City Cast Madison podcast today, host Bianca Martin talks about the honor with executive producer Hayley Sperling and Pete Benck, owner of Madison’s Good Style Shop. Benck also gives the inside scoop on what to expect from November’s Midwest Vintage Flea market. [ National Geographic, 🎧 City Cast Madison, Midwest Vintage Flea]

“Inhumane.” “Some sort of Soviet gulag.” “A disturbing and alienating Lovecraftian monster.”

And that’s just from the people who LIKE the Mosse Humanities Building.

Love it or hate it, the grey, brutalist building on the UW-Madison campus at 455 N. Park St. nicknamed the “Inhumanities Building” has been a major part of the college experience for generations of students. Now that the building’s days may finally be numbered, Madison artist Doug E.L. Haynes has captured the unique character and history of the building, and the conflicting opinions about it, in his new illustrated book “The Humanities Building: Do you love it or hate it?”

Haynes met me at the building last week to talk about the book and his release party on Oct. 26 at Leopold’s Books Bar Caffè. (In what was perhaps an unwitting tribute to the building’s notorious labyrinthine structure, Haynes and I first spotted each other standing on different levels of the courtyard, and then spent several minutes trying to figure out which set of stairs would connect us.)

“I don't want people to think that I neglected the opinions of people who hate the building,” Haynes said in an interview in a concrete-bunker-like classroom in the building, featuring a row of tiny skylights covered in blackout tape. “But I think I do have some love. Madison is filled with conventional architecture. There’s a lot of buildings that could be anywhere in the world. They’re forgettable.”

An Architectural Oddity

The Humanities Building is anything but forgettable. Designed by Chicago architect Harry Weese (who also designed the original Chazen Museum of Art building next door) but underfunded by the state Legislature, it’s been plagued with maintenance issues almost since it opened in 1969, known for inadequate ventilation, leaking roofs, temperature issues, and crumbling concrete.

Haynes first came to the building as a West High School student taking summer ceramics classes and was immediately fascinated by it. Later, Haynes attended UW-Madison, where his very first class was in the building, and he spent years sketching in its studios, listening to lectures in its classrooms, and otherwise hanging out.