8 Picture-Perfect Main Streets In Wisconsin
Wisconsin keeps a lot of its history out on the main street, in buildings that have outlasted the trades that put them up. Walk the limestone blocks of Mineral Point or the Swiss storefronts of New Glarus and you are reading the town's record in stone and paint. Some downtowns grew up around a lake, others around a courthouse square or a river. What they have in common is that people still work and shop and gather on them. These eight Wisconsin main streets are worth slowing down for, one block at a time.
Mineral Point
Mineral Point runs up and down a steep grade, and the buildings along it are the point. Cornish miners cut the limestone blocks downtown in the late 1820s and 1830s, and they are still standing. The Walker House, a stone inn and pub built in 1836, shows the thick walls and tight joints those miners were known for. A short walk uphill, Pendarvis preserves a row of hand-cut stone cottages from the 1840s. The Globe Clay Center runs a pottery studio with wheel-throwing workshops and sells wood-fired pieces, and a couple of minutes on foot puts you at Cafe 43, in a building that used to be a hotel, where people come back for the coffee.
New Glarus
New Glarus sits about 25 miles south of Madison, and it has leaned into its Swiss start since 1845. Walk 1st Street and the storefronts read like an alpine village, which is the whole idea. The Glarner Stube serves Swiss and American food behind dark wood paneling that has been there a long time. New Glarus Bakery has been turning out nut horns and buttercream cakes since 1910. The Chalet of the Golden Fleece on 2nd Street copies a Bernese house and holds Swiss folk art and old jewelry inside, and a few minutes away Puempel's Olde Tavern keeps painted murals on its walls and Spotted Cow on tap.
Sturgeon Bay
Sturgeon Bay is the working center of Door County, and Third Avenue is its spine. The storefronts run 19th-century brick, and the businesses inside them turn over without the buildings changing. Third Avenue Playworks stages plays and musicals in a building that started as a flour store between 1898 and 1904. Martin Park drops a patch of green into the middle of downtown and hosts summer concerts and outdoor movies. One street over on 4th Avenue, the Door County Historical Museum lays out the town's early years for anyone who wants the long version.
Hudson
Hudson sits on the steep east bank of the St. Croix River, right at the Minnesota line. The downtown runs historic brick between 1st and 3rd Streets, walkable end to end. The Octagon House, built in 1855, is the one people remember, an eight-sided home with a garden and rooms kept the way they looked between 1850 and 1950. The Abigail Page Antique Mall on 2nd Street fills an 1880 building with more than 20 dealers across two floors. A few blocks down, the Phipps Center for the Arts runs exhibits and theater in a 247-seat house, and Lakefront Park puts a beach, a boat launch, and a bandshell at the bottom of the hill.
Baraboo
Baraboo built its downtown around Courthouse Square, with Oak and Third Streets framing it. The Al. Ringling Theatre is the showpiece, a 1915 hall with a terracotta front and Palladian windows that locals call America's Prettiest Playhouse. Across from it, the Sauk County Courthouse carries a Neoclassical and Beaux-Arts face worth a look. Over on Broadway, the Al. Ringling Mansion, finished in 1906 in heavy Romanesque Revival stone, runs tours, overnight stays, and a brewery in the back. The circus money that built all of it is still legible on the street.
Wausau
Wausau runs along the Wisconsin River with Rib Mountain's granite slope behind it. The 400 Block on Third Street is a manicured green that pulls the town together for summer concerts. A block off it, The Grand Theater shows ballet, comedy, and everything between behind a limestone front and a classic revival marquee. The Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art is the other anchor, easy to spot by its big pillars and stone steps, with local and international work inside. It is a downtown that uses its river and its mountain instead of hiding them.
Lake Geneva
Lake Geneva filled up with Chicago money after the Great Chicago Fire of 1871, when the wealthy built summer estates along the water. The best way to see them is the Lake Geneva Shore Path, a 26-mile public trail that runs right past the lawns. The Riviera Ballroom, a 1932 Mediterranean Revival building with arched windows and a lit fountain, stops people for a photo on Main Street. Kilwins draws a crowd with striped awnings and 32 ice cream flavors. Farther along, the Geneva Lake Museum traces the town from its Potawatomi roots to its resort years behind a red-brick front.
Burlington
Burlington sits where the White and Fox Rivers meet, with tree-lined streets through downtown. Pine Street, Milwaukee Avenue, and Chestnut Street form the core. The Plaza Theater, open since 1928, runs four screens with vintage touches that regulars count on. On the same street, the Spinning Top and Yo-Yo Museum keeps more than 2,000 antique tops and yo-yos, which is exactly as odd as it sounds. Echo Veterans Memorial Park puts greenery, bike trails, and a fishing spot downtown, and Veterans Terrace catches the best of the sunset off Echo Lake.
Discover The Beauty Of Wisconsin, One Block At A Time
Wisconsin draws people for its lakes and its woods, but the main streets hold a different kind of pull. The buildings are old and still working, the trades that raised them written into the brick and stone. New Glarus keeps its Swiss lines, Mineral Point its Cornish limestone, Lake Geneva its lakefront estates, and Wausau its river and granite. Walk any one of them slowly and the town tells you what it was and what it still is.
