The Kinney Shoe Store about 1958, shortly before it moved from its East Mifflin Street location to the Madison East Shopping Center, Madison's first shopping center, on East Washington. The exodus from the Square of retail businesses would soon become a flood. SHSW Newhouse Collection

The decline of downtown Madison during the past three decades was in a sense inevitable--the result of market forces beyond anyone's control. Changes in society imposed demands that the downtown could not satisfy. Demands for convenience, safety, openness, newness, simplicity and economy were--and are--all more easily met by development on the periphery . . . Currently, downtown cannot compete. Kenton Peters, 1990

Business Blocks | Kinney Shoe Store | Manchester's Department Store | May Building | Mifflin Street | Newhouse, John (Reporter and photographer) | Peters, Kenton