You’re looking for a sturdy, square mansion built from warm, honey-colored sandstone blocks with a small columned porch out front-just follow the path and you can’t miss its solid, historic charm.
Now, as you stand in the sunshine outside this grand house, imagine rolling back the years to the 1850s. Picture stonecutters across Lake Mendota, chipping away at pale sandstone, their hammers ringing out over the water as the walls of this very mansion begin to rise. Built by Catherine and Julius T. White, it was a showpiece from the start-with broad eaves and elegant window hoods, the kind of place where you’d expect to see ladies in hoop skirts and gentlemen in top hats swirling through a lively party.
But the Whites didn’t stay long. Within a few years, the house switched hands to George and Emily Delaplaine, early Madison nobles who kept the tradition of grand gatherings alive. If you close your eyes, you might almost hear the clinking of glasses and animated laughter drifting out onto Gilman Street as music from a distant piano fills the halls.
In 1867, the Thorps arrived-Joseph, a lumber baron, and Amelia, who preferred big city excitement. When their daughter, Sara, married Ole Bull, the world-famous violinist, the mansion hosted the kind of extravagant wedding any soap opera would envy. Bull was so enchanted by the place he turned the lakeside slope into terraced formal gardens-imagine strolling down to the water, past clipped hedges and marble statues, the scent of flowers hanging in the air.
By 1883, the old stone walls witnessed a new chapter as it became the governor’s official residence. Governors paced these rooms, perhaps wondering if the echo of laughter from wilder days still lingered under the high Italianate ceiling. In 1951, after almost seven decades of political plotting and elegant teas, the place was handed over to graduate students-there’s a contrast for you: from governors in tailcoats to sleep-deprived scholars with ramen noodles!
Today, thanks to a loving restoration, you can stay overnight in this marvel, now called the Governor’s Mansion Inn. Still, if you listen carefully in the quiet moments, maybe you’ll catch the faint echo of a long-ago celebration wafting down from upstairs.
