16 N. Carroll St. Built 1914
Leonard Gay and his sons, real estate developers who built apartment and commercial buildings,
constructed the nine-story Gay Building, now the Churchill Building, in 1914-15. Designed by
young architect
James Law, who later was mayor of Madison, the
building was Madison's first skyscraper, nearly twice as tall as any other Madison building at that
time except the Capitol.
Construction of the Gay Building and the
Belmont Hotel
spurred prohibiting buildings taller than the base of the Capitol dome.
