The Regent Neighborhood Association serves homes near the university surrounded by University Ave. on the north, N. Breese Terrace on the east, Fox Ave. on the south and Virginia Terrace and N. Franklin Ave. on the west. The neighborhood is home to many historic homes as well as Forest Hill Cemetery.
Some interesting historic locations include:
- Bradley House, 106 N Prospect Ave. (1909): Bradley House was given to Josephine and Harold Bradley by Josephine's father, Charles Crane, a big plumbing magnate in Chicago. Harold Bradley was a professor of chemistry at UW-Madison. The home was damaged by fire in 1972 and restored by Sigma Phi Society.
- Ely House, 205 N. Prospect Ave. (1896): Professor Richard Ely was a nationally known land economist whose progressive and socialist teachings caused him to be tried in 1894 by the Board of Regents. He was vindicated and a statement of academic freedom was afterward released by the university.
- Gilmore House, 120 Ely Place (1908):The Gilmore House was built by Frank Lloyd Wright and is an internationally famous house. Located at the highest point in University Heights, the home's living rooms are placed on the second floor to take advantage of the beautiful panoramic views of Madison. The copper-roofed wings earned it the nickname “the airplane house.” The home was built for Eugene Gilmore, professor of law at UW-Madison, who left in 1922 to be Vice Governor of the Philippines and returned in 1930 to serve as Dean of the law school.
- Buell House, 115 Ely Place (18940: Charles Buell was a prominent Madison attorney and real estate developer. This home was the first house built on the crown of University Heights and upon completion it looked so big and alone it was called “Buell’s Folly.” By the time Buell died in 1938, his home was surrounded by the homes of many of Madison’s elite.
- Olin Park: John Olin was the founder of the Park and Pleasure Drive Association, a private organization formed to promote the planting of trees and shrubs for Madison’s park system, and served as president of the organization from 1892 until 1909. Olin came to UW-Madison in 1874 as an instructor in rhetoric and oratory. He served as a lecturer in law and president of the Wisconsin Bar Association.
- Forest Hill Cemetery, 1 Speedway Rd: In 1857, the city purchased this land for its cemetery as one of the first national cemeteries in Wisconsin. The park-like setting contains burial plots for Union and Confederate soldiers. Some Confederate soldiers were held at Camp Randall during the Civil War, and 140 of them died there. There are also 4 Native American effigy mounds in the cemetery: 2 panthers, a flying bird and linear mound. Some historic buildings are the receiving vault, built 1865, John Catlin Memorial Chapel, built 1878, and a mausoleum, built 1916. A number of notable citizens are buried at Forest Hill:
- Stephen M. Babcock: inventor of the butterfat test that made the modern dairy industry possible(Babcock Hall at UW)
- Richard T. Ely: served as the dean of American economics at UW-Madison
- The LaFollettes: Wisconsin's dominant political family for over half a century
- Harry Steenbock: discoverer of vitamin D (Steenbock Memorial Library at UW)
- Henry Harden: captor of Confederate president Jefferson Davis
- The Jefferson family: descendents of the United States' third president
- John Olin (Olin Ave and Olin Park): the father of Madison's park system
- Halle Steensland: vice consul to Norway and Sweden
- Rabbi Manfred Swarsensky: one of Madison's leading religious figures (Manfred E Swarsensky Humanitarian Award since 1982 from Rotary Club)
- William Freeman Vilas: postmaster general and Secretary of the Interior (Vilas Park and Zoo named for son)
- Aldo Leopold lived at 2222 Van Hise Ave, built in 1924. He served with the US Forest Service for 19 years and was transferred to the Forest Products Lab in Madison in 1924. In 1933, he became a Professor of Game Management in the Agricultural Economics department at UW-Madison. He taught there until his death in 1948. He was a pioneer in forestry, wilderness conservation, soil conservation and wild life ecology.
