Pres House is the nickname for this University Presbyterian Church and Student Center on State Street in Madison. This building began as an answer to campus life: in 1901 Rev. James Beveridge Lee of Milwaukee’s Immanuel Presbyterian Church and Rev. Barton B. Bigler of Madison’s Christ Church asked the state Synod to provide a minister for Presbyterian students, and the Synod founded the Presbyterian Student Union. The Union met in Christ Church, one mile (1.6 km) from campus, and that distance discouraged student attendance.
When Rev. George Hunt succeeded Bigler in 1904 he pushed the Synod further, and the Synod authorized the transfer of Rev. Matthew C. Allison from Indiana University in Bloomington to serve students. Allison and Hunt proposed a new building closer to campus. The church you see was designed in 1931 by local architect Edward Tough in a Gothic Revival style, and after a delay occasioned by the Great Depression it was completed four years later.
Stand here and imagine those conversations about ministry and students; feel how that one-mile problem led to this very place. Edward Tough drew these Gothic Revival lines in 1931, and the Great Depression delayed the finish by four years.