Frost Woods Neighborhood Walking Tour: Madison Trust for Historic Preservation

Frost Woods Neighborhood Walking Tour: Madison Trust for Historic Preservation

Date: Sunday, September 20, 2026

Tour Times: Tours will begin at 8:30 a.m. and run every 30 minutes with the last tour starting at 1:00 p.m.

Meeting location address and map will be sent in your confirmation email and all email reminders.

Just a few miles from downtown Madison, along the quiet shore of Lake Monona, sits one of Wisconsin’s most remarkable neighborhoods, that many people have never visited.

Frost Woods was just added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2026, and we’re celebrating with a walking tour that pulls back the curtain on a neighborhood that has been quietly extraordinary for nearly a century.

Frost Woods is home to the very first International Style house in Wisconsin, a bold, flat-roofed, geometric gem built in 1931 that shocked the neighbors and made the front page of the newspaper. You’ll see eight more houses by the same visionary firm, Beatty & Strang, whose founders trained in the studios of Europe and brought the modernist revolution home to a lakeshore neighborhood in Monona. One of these houses was featured in Architectural Record and is shown to architecture students to this day as a prototype of its era.

This isn’t just a sidewalk tour. You’ll step inside the Tompkins House, the first home in Monona individually listed on the National Register, and get a rare look at its original cabinetry, vented attic, and vintage PA system. The tour ends at Bungalowen, a beloved 1911 lakeside cottage with a history as rambling as its floorplan, where snacks and the first floor await your exploration.