File:Historical Marker, Lincoln School, Gorham Street, Tenney-Lapham, Madison, WI.jpg

English: Built in 1915, this Chicago School and Sullivanesque-style building was designed by Claude and Starck to house the public Lincoln School. It is the clearest demonstration of the work of Claude and Starck of the influence of Louis Sullivan on their work, with Louis W. Claude having formerly worked for Adler and Sullivan after graduating from university in 1891. He worked for Adler and Sullivan at the same time as Frank Lloyd Wright, whose Prairie School style also seems to have influenced some of the firm’s other work, as well as this school. Edward F. Starck did not receive a formal post-secondary education, but became an experienced draftsman before going into a business partnership with Claude. The building’s composition is influenced by the Classical Revival movement, but the ornamentation and rhythms of the building are distinctively influenced by the Chicago School and Prairie School styles, with the ornamentation being Sullivanesque.

The building is clad in buff brick with a low-slope roof enclosed by a low parapet, with an overall boxy horizontally-oriented rectangular massing with smaller rectangular massings, mostly oriented vertically, on the side and rear facades. The building’s principal facades on the front, sides, and rear feature square pilasters featuring a terra cotta trim band at the base of the pilasters, decorative Sullivanesque capitals, a band of decorative trim above the pilasters wrapping the entire building, and decorative terra cotta reliefs on the parapet, which features a terra cotta cap. The building’s windows are modern vinyl replacements of the originals, with one-over-ones on the first and second floors, and slider windows in the punched opening basement windows. The two main entrances to the building, at either end of the front facade but set back from the front on shorter side wings, feature recessed double entry doors, with decorative arched relief panels, corbels, eagle sculptures, and panels emblazoned with the words “Lincoln School” above. Much of this detail was copied from a bank in Winona, Minnesota, designed by another former Adler and Sullivan employee. The back features a one-story wing facing the lake with brick columns and a recessed porch, which provides a sheltered exterior space facing the lake. The interior

The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980, and is a contributing structure in the Fourth Lake Ridge Historic District, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1998. The building was repurposed as the Madison Art Center after it closed as a public school in 1963, which outgrew the building and moved out in 1980. It was repurposed and adaptively reused as 28 apartments in 1985, with a terrace on the roof of the rear wing, a parking garage addition with a roof covered in grass, and a restored exterior. The building is one of the best and most direct examples of the influence that Wright and Sullivan had on other architects in the Midwestern United States.