Wisconsin keeps a lot of its history out on the main street, in buildings that have outlasted the trades that put them up. Walk the limestone blocks of Mineral Point or the Swiss storefronts of New Glarus and you are reading the town’s record in stone and paint. Some downtowns grew up around a lake, others around a courthouse square or a river. What they have in common is that people still work and shop and gather on them. These eight Wisconsin main streets are worth slowing down for, one block at a time.
Hudson
Hudson sits on the steep east bank of the St. Croix River, right at the Minnesota line. The downtown runs historic brick between 1st and 3rd Streets, walkable end to end. The Octagon House, built in 1855, is the one people remember, an eight-sided home with a garden and rooms kept the way they looked between 1850 and 1950. The Abigail Page Antique Mall on 2nd Street fills an 1880 building with more than 20 dealers across two floors. A few blocks down, the Phipps Center for the Arts runs exhibits and theater in a 247-seat house, and Lakefront Park puts a beach, a boat launch, and a bandshell at the bottom of the hill.