Located on the Capitol Square directly across from Wisconsin’s State Capitol building, the 10-story-tall Tenney Building has been an important city of Madison landmark since the day it was first occupied in 1930 and it is one of Madison’s two finest Art Deco style high-rise office buildings.

The Tenney Building is a large L-plan building that occupies a parcel that makes up the south corner of the block upon which it sits, its two granite and limestone-clad principal facades face southeast onto E. Main Street and southwest onto S. Pinckney Street, and its first story is given over to commercial enterprises while its upper nine stories are given over to office space.

It was developed and partially owned by members of Madison’s historically prominent Tenney family and occupies the site of this family’s earlier, three-story-tall rectilinear plan, brick-clad, Italianate Style Tenney Block, which was built in 1877.

The family’s new, much larger Tenney Building was designed by Law, Law, and Potter, which in 1930 was Madison’s largest architectural firm, and it is an excellent example of the Art Deco style whose design has a pronounced vertical emphasis and features such typical Art Deco motifs as bands of geometric ornaments that are made out of both cut stone and terra cotta and highly decorative bronze lighting fixtures and grill work. In addition, the building’s lavishly decorated elevator lobby, which features boldly colored marble walls, a marble floor, polished bronze elevator doors, bronze lighting fixtures, and other polished bronze elements, is one of Madison’s finest Art Deco style interiors as well.