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Few parts
of Madison have undergone so many dramatic changes as the
East Rail Corridor, the area between East Washington and East
Wilson, and from Blair St. to the Yahara River.
 When
the glaciers receded after the last ice age, about 13,000
years ago, most of the Isthmus was underwater. Only a few
ridges poked up through what is known as Glacial Lake Yahara.
Then, the Yahara River broke free to the south, and Lake Yahara
dropped by about 12 feet, exposing Madison’s modern form.
But much of the lowlands that had been underwater remained
wet prairie and marshland. These were prime fishing and hunting
grounds for the local tribes.
 When
James Doty platted Madison in 1836, right-angled street grids
were considered a hallmark of civilization on the nation's
western frontier. The whole Isthmus was therefore platted
with a rectilinear grid, regardless of topography.
Years later, in 1909, city planner
John Nolen would lament Doty's decision. "The impulse
to follow [L'Enfant's] plan of Washington [D.C.] was not an
altogether sound one," he wrote, "for the narrow
strip of irregular land in the Wisconsin wilderness, bounded
by irregular shore lines at places less than a mile apart,
called imperatively for a plan based primarily upon the peculiar
topography, and not for the mechanical and thoughtless application
of a fixed geometrical scheme."
Between Doty's time and Nolen's,
what is now the East Rail Corridor was known as the Great
Central Marsh – a cattail marsh with sheets of open water.
Nineteenth-century residences on the East Isthmus clung to
the glacial ridges along Gorham St. and the Monona lakeshore.
The Great Central Marsh was considered a useless landscape
and a blight on the city; if filled, it would become potential
new real estate.
 An
1883 Wisconsin State Journal editorial could not have made
the point more plainly when it argued, “The [Great Central]
marsh is the natural seat for manufacturing industries ...
for land is cheap and plenty there for railroad, warehouse,
and factory purposes.” From this time forward, there
appears to have been a strong consensus --indeed it was almost
a foregone conclusion -- that this area would become the factory
district. Madisonians firmly believed that smokestacks would
soon replace the cattails.
As the nation and Madison industrialized,
the Great Central Marsh was indeed filled, and factories,
infrastructure, and working-class housing were built on top.
By the 1930s the wetlands had been transformed into a bustling
25-track railroad yard serving the city’s Factory District.
In its manufacturing heyday, the East Rail Corridor made or
processed batteries, machine parts, and fire extinguishers;
lumber, coal, and oil; paint, hardware, and auto parts; cigars,
candy, and crackers. Workers lived in the low-lying flats
of the Tenney-Lapham neighborhood to the north or the Willy
Street-Marquette neighborhood to the south (areas that remain
wetlands, as any resident who has gone down their basement
steps after a rainstorm can tell you).
Between 1950 and 2000 all but two the
railroad tracks were removed, and most of the factories either
closed or relocated to more spacious suburban locations. (Today,
only Mautz Paint & Varnish, Research Products Corp., and
MG&E can trace their roots back to mid-century.) This
has left the land in the East Rail Corridor remarkably open,
underutilized, and relatively inexpensive. Much of it is devoted
to surface storage, surface parking, or is simply derelict.
Meanwhile, the once-working-class nearby neighborhoods now
increasingly house commuters to downtown, to the University
of Wisconsin, or to the suburbs, and rising housing costs
have begun changing neighborhood character.
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