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Property Location
Property Features
Originally a cemetery, Orton Park still contains some native oak and hickory and was Madison's first public park. Madison Landmark: 10/6/1975. City Beautiful.
This park is also a contributing element of the Orton Park Historic District (listed 10/31/88). The bandstand is not contributing.
City of Madison, Wisconsin Underrepresented Communities Historic Resource Survey Report:
In 1887, Orton Park became Madison’s first public park. A century later, it played a role in the visibility of LGBTQ residents in the Williamson-Marquette neighborhood. The park is at the core of the neighborhood, which gained a reputation in the 1980s as a community that embraced the Gay Liberation Movement and had a relatively high concentration of LGBTQ residents.
This reputation was cemented by the neighborhood’s stewardship of a casting of George Segal’s sculpture Gay Liberation from 1986 to 1990. The sculpture portrayed two couples of the same sex casually enjoying the park. The piece was commissioned to commemorate the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York. Two castings were made; one was to be placed in a park across the street from the historic event and the other was to be installed at Stanford University in California. However, when it came time to install the work, the famously tolerant New York City neighborhood of Greenwich Village would not accept it.
Some village residents opposed the installation, and local officials failed to allocate funding for it. The Williamson-Marquette neighborhood agreed to host the sculpture, and, with the support of the city, it was installed in Orton Park until installation at its intended location became feasible. The LGBTQ community saw the sculpture as a tangible public symbol of their presence at a time when the community was trying to cultivate positive visibility.
National And State Register Of Historic Places Listings
Architecture & History Inventory
The Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory (AHI) is a digital source of information on historic buildings, structures, and objects that have been surveyed by the State Historic Preservation Office in Wisconsin. Each property has a digital record providing basic information about the property and images.
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For a credit line: Wisconsin Historical Society, Creator, Title, Unique Identifier.
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