Urban Market and Coffeehouse -- and a tour of 20th century Tenney-Lapham history
A new
business, Urban Market and Coffee House, has sprung up ready to serve
bicyclists, bus riders, and neighbors on the old stretch of Sherman Avenue
between Tenney and Burrows Parks. When I visited one day recently, I was greeted by Suzanne, one of the
owners, and Holly, her assistant. Although they have only been open about six
weeks, they have big plans for the sunny, convenient space. Because they are
adjacent to Sherman Terrace, they want to serve the needs of nearby apartment
and condo dwellers by providing a neighborhood coffeehouse with sandwiches,
bakery, and other foods as well as a small market. They already have been found
by neighborhood children, who come
in on weekday mornings to pick up a snack before getting on the bus to school.
Word-of-mouth, along with their excellent location, has brought adults in as
well, and Urban Market is very open to requests for new grocery and convenience
items to carry.
The market
portion of the business is in front, and along the side of the long, narrow
building is the coffeehouse with plenty of tables and chairs as well as a
partially separate meeting room with comfortable couches. This separate area
can be booked for small meetings or community gatherings. In summer Urban
Market and Coffeehouse will begin offering smoothies and ice cream to refresh
cyclists and other users of the bike path. The building has a shady porch on
two sides with benches where customers will be able to rest and enjoy their
treats outside if they wish.
The
slightly unusual building was most recently used as a day care center, but Suzanne told me it originally was a
Rennebohm's Drug Store! For those who have not lived long in Madison,
Rennebohm's was a big local chain of drug stores during the middle part of the
last century. Eventually it was purchased by Walgreens, but to older
Madisonians, Rennebohm's was as much a generic name for a drug store as
Walgreens is for people today.
Curious
about the history of Urban Market's little building, I spent an afternoon doing
some research in the public library. A chapter of Tenney-Lapham history is
written in the streets and structures of this area. While the western part of
our neighborhood, the Original Plat,
predates the automobile, this eastern part of the neighborhood was
shaped by patterns of automobile usage, gas stations, and finally mid-century
urban planning and traffic engineering. Follow along as I host a quick walking tour of this early Madison
"suburb."
In the north corner of Tenney-Lapland, the part of Sherman Avenue that connects Tenney Park with Burrows Park and North Sherman was once the main route from the north suburban area and Maple Bluff to downtown. This little extension of Sherman Avenue carries far lighter traffic today (though still more than residents might like) because in the mid-1970s Fordem Avenue was created, connecting North Sherman with Johnson Street to encourage commuters to use the Johnson-Gorham corridor for crossing the Isthmus. This is why North Sherman Avenue's name suddenly changes to Fordem in the 2300 block.
Before
Fordem Avenue was opened, the land there was known as a "hobo
jungle." Vagrants hitched rides on the trains that converged nearby, and they would set up little camps in a
rough brushy woods of box elder near where the Camelot Apartments sit now.
Walking our dogs through there in the early 1970s, I would sometimes find
concealed campsites complete with a firepit and shelter where these men lived
in summer. (They weren't called "homeless persons" until the Reagan
era.)
At the
corner of Sherman and North Sherman on the east, and Sherman and Brearly on the
west (by the big oak tree near the Presbyterian church), you can still see where the sweeping
curves of the old Sherman right-of-way were squared off at this time into sharp
intersections in order to slow the flow of traffic on Sherman so Gorham would
be the preferable route.
The opening of Fordem Avenue changed not
only the lives of the hobos and the appearance of the landscape, but also
brought about the decline of a small retail area on Sherman Avenue that had
existed since its beginnings as a route to Madison's earliest
"suburbs." The building Urban Market and Coffee House occupies today
was once part of this retail community. But it wasn't a pedestrian retail area
like, say, Norris Court. It was an early automobile community.
A 1916
photo in David Mollenhoff's "Madison -- the Formative Years" shows
Sherman Avenue was one of the city's first paved streets. One can only imagine
the wealthy and politically connected early residents of Maple Bluff deciding
they wanted more than a muddy, rutted path on which to drive their shiny new
cars home after a trip downtown. This is today's Sherman Avenue bike route.
As early as
the mid-1920s, King's Service Station was open at 2301 Sherman Avenue. By 1935,
in the depths of the Great Depression, 2301 was not only still open but had
been joined by Pennco Service at 2040 Sherman, run by a Henry Harbort who
apparently lived next door at 2038. 2250 Sherman was the Community Pharmacy.
Lakewood School was at 2314 Sherman; the park where it stood is clearly visible
today.
After World
War II, those addresses still supported the same businesses, and 2237 Sherman (right across from the
park) held a root beer bar (which
later moved to 2234). By 1955 the neighborhood was thriving and three more
"filling stations" were present, making five in all: Pure Gas at
2039, Pennco at 2040, Cities Service at 2101-03, Shell at 2249, and Super
Service at 2301. In addition to the pharmacy, National Food Stores and Strand
Bakery (an early supermarket?) were at 2117 Sherman Avenue. Parking lots were part of the design of
these businesses, different from
the way retail in Madison's original plat was laid out.
Sherman
Terrace Apartments were built sometime between 1947 and 1950, appearing in the 1950 city directory as
Tilton Terrace Apartments. By 1955 they had their present name, and the
adjacent space now occupied by Urban Market and Coffeehouse was, as Suzanne
told me, Rennebohm's store #14, with its own convenient parking lot. Joining
Rennebohm's at that address by 1960 was Terrace Superette Grocery -- like Urban
Market, only 40 years earlier.
The opening
of Fordem Avenue and related changes, however, spelled the end of this thriving
little commercial area. A DoNut Land at 2241 Sherman, present in 1975, was gone by 1980. By then only one gas
station remained, a Standard Oil
at 2255. Some buildings that housed early businesses still stand today,
renovated but recognizable, while others are only vacant lots. The street is
largely residential. But a walk or bike ride with this little article in hand
may open your eyes to the Sherman Avenue of fifty years ago -- a busy cluster
of gas stations, stores, and even a school, an automobile community, a true
early suburb.
Sherman's
old commercial district grew up around the automobile and died when cars were
routed another way. Will bike ridership and the Madison bike paths bring an
urban renaissance to this old road? Urban Market and Coffeehouse hopes so. It
wouldn't be the only part of Madison where retail is beginning to realign with
bike routes.
-Mary
Pulliam