1554 W Main St
Echo History
Weary travelers have long welcomed the sight of the Echo Tap at the corner of Bedford and Main. Many a train traveler crossed West Washington Avenue from the Milwaukee Road Station to feed their hunger and refresh themselves with a drink. The tavern's name Echo Tap derives from the sounds of the passing trains reverberating in the Fourth Ward neighborhood.
The Echo Tap has been open for 65 years, same location, same family, beginning with John and Theresa Hausladen, who bought the business in 1941 when it was called Maly's Tavern. When John died, Theresa and her twin daughters, Genevieve and Elizabeth, ran the business until a Milwaukee Road worker named Mike Rynes took a liking to the bar and to Gen, and he married one and then bought the other in 1957.
Mike and Jen had seven children, including son Pat, third generation and current proprietor of the Echo Tap.
Inside the Echo, the walls and ceilings are paneled in more than a mile of box car timber, and the floor is covered with hard fired clay quarry tile, all this the result of a revovation that Pat made in the 90s to fulfill his father's dream. Today, Pat greets friends and neighbors with the smile of someone who is living a dream come true.
Across the street from the Echo, the Badger Bus station brings today's traveler within sight of Madison's premier neighborhood tavern, the Echo Tap.
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Echo Tap on West Main Street – Named for the echo from the many trains that used to
rattle by regularly on the tracks behind the bar.
