2709 Sommers Ave. Built 1863 Madison Landmark
National Register Italian Villa
Once part of a 191 acre farm known as “Elmside” it was built by
Simeon Mills in 1863. The land reached from to the shore of
Lake Monona. Its walls are two feet thick; there are twenty
large rooms, eight with fireplaces, and six separate cellars. Townspeople called it “Mills Folly,”
since it was located so far east that no one could conceive of such a long daily commute to town.
He eventually moved back to town because his wife Maria didn’t like being so isolated; he built her a
house on Monona Avenue in the block where the
City-County Building now stands.
Mills sold his farmhouse to industrialist John W. Hudson, who later developed
Hudson Park.
Around 1890 Julia Miller, the daughter of Reverend J. S. Miller, a retired Baptist minister who
operated a 200-acre farm on Lake Monona, moved into Elmside with her mother. She lived there
until 1939. In 1918, at age 65, she married John Hicks, a machinist ten years her junior. It was
her first marriage.
The original name of the house is today commemorated in Elmside Boulevard.
