Madison Civic Center

In 1974, the Madison Civic Center was announced as the new addition to downtown Madison's arts district. However, issues with the Civic Center's location and design began decades earlier in the 1950s with Frank Lloyd Wright's version of the center. After Wright's creation of the Monona Terrace, he envisioned a terrace auditorium that would house "theaters, an exhibition hall, convention and community centers, banquet halls, an art gallery, and parking for more than 850 cars," all hanging over the edge of the lake (Wisconsin State Journal 1980). Due to delays, legal issues, finances, and Wright's passing in 1959, his vision of the Civic Center on the lake never came to fruition. Nonetheless, the hope of a Civic Center for Madison's community remained strong.

Due to donations from large companies like Oscar Meyer and help from the city, the Madison Civic Center's development officially began in 1974 and continued until late 1979. Using the Capitol Theater, renamed the Oscar Meyer Theater, as the foundation for the Madison Civic Center, the development involved purchasing more land for expansion and developing a new floor plan to include a new theater and meeting rooms. To involve Dane County residents in the center's construction, the Madison Civic Center's committee issued a contest in 1979 to name the new center's "experimental" theater. The winning name came from Russell Frank, who suggested the name "The Isthmus Playhouse" (Capitol Times 1979). He won tickets to performances, and the theater kept its name until 2004.

Since the center's planning took years, the Madison Civic Center's committee agreed that the grand opening needed to be spectacular. With the Managing Director of the Civic Center, Edgar Neiss, heading up the building's construction, Thomas Garver, the Director of the Madison Arts Center, working to incorporate art into the new center's design, and Kathy Silbiger, coordinating the opening festival, the trio guided the Madison Civic Center through its final months of development. The Madison Civic Center opened its doors for the first time on February 22, 1980, to rave reviews and many news articles lauding the design, opening festivities, and performance schedule.

While the opening of the Madison Civic Center was successful, and the schedule for the first season was promising, the fledgling center found itself in financial trouble after its first year. With financial aid from the city to finish out their first season, the Madison Civic Center's lack of an official director after Neiss and Garver stepped away to continue with other projects became a priority for helping stabilize the center. A Madison resident and former director of the Wisconsin Union Theater, Ralph Sandler, was brought in as the new director of the Madison Civic Center in 1981. Sandler took on the already struggling Madison Civic Center and attempted to smooth out the financial concerns and new building issues. After nine years as director, Sandler was replaced in 1990 by Robert D'Angelo, who maintained the position until the Madison Civic Center's end.

For decades, the Madison Civic Center was a performance space that hosted Broadway musicals, comedy acts, ballets, and concerts from artists like Gordon Lightfoot, Tina Turner, and Joan Baez. The center became a community space that hosted the International Festival, the Holiday Festival, and Duck Soup Cinema screenings in the Oscar Meyer Theater. However, by the 1990s, the space was growing old. In 1996, the Wisconsin Foundation for the Arts began suggesting that the city needed better facilities for the arts and that renovations to the Madison Civic Center were necessary for its continued survival. A year later, Jerry Frautschi created the Overture Foundation and, in 1998, donated $50 million to help create a new arts district for downtown Madison. Frautschi's donation doubled in 1999, and with the support of the city, the Overture Center began to take shape.