The First Unitarian Society, Madison, was organized in 1879, but there had been Unitarian meetings in the city as early as 1855. Under the leadership of Professor William F. Allen, the Rev. William C. Wright, and Mr. H.H. Giles, and with financial aid from the American Unitarian Association, fourteen persons pledged $509 for the formation of a society on January 5, 1879. By-laws, articles of association, and the Bond of Union were adopted later that year.
At first the Society usually met in the Gates of Heaven Synagogue on West Washington Street, but in 1886 it moved to its own newly constructed church on the corner of Dayton Street and Wisconsin Avenue. In 1912 Dr. Charles H. Vilas gave money to build an adjoining parish house, and later he furnished means of buying a parsonage as well. These buildings served the Society until 1945. The present meeting house on University Bay Drive, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, was first occupied in 1951.
| 1880 |
Founding of the Sunday School
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| 1884 |
Founding of the Ladies' Society (later, the Women's Alliance)
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| 1916 |
Completion of the parish house
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| 1937 |
Reorganization replacing the Board of Trustees with the Executive Board
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| 1952 |
Hiring of the Rev. Max David Gaebler
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| 1955 |
Organization of the North Central Conference
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| 1961 |
National Unitarian-Universalist merger
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| 1964 |
Completion of the meeting house addition
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See Introducing the First Unitarian Society of Madison, Wisconsin (circa 1948) and Merle Curti's Our Golden Age (1954) for accounts of the Society emphasizing intellectual and architectural history. Copies of both were separated from the records and placed in the Wisconsin Historical Society Library.
