Back to the Future: Honoring Rennie’s

For almost seven decades, Rennebohm's drug stores served the Madison community, becoming much more than dispensers of prescription medicine. Beloved for their soda fountains, Bucky burgers, cherry phosphates, and grilled Danish, the "Rennie's" stores became social gathering places and provided employment for many UW-Madison undergraduates.

Wisconsin Congressman David Obey recalls, how he "landed a job hustling tables at Rennebohm's drug store" while he attended the university. Former UW-Madison Athletic Director Pat Richter met his future wife at Rennebohm's on State Street. Novelist and short story writer Alice Adams has two of her characters "going to lunch at the Rennebohm's across from the school," where they dine on "thick chocolate malteds and English muffins."

And when Julian M. Sund, an emeritus professor of agronomy died in 2004, a memorial resolution passed by the UW-Madison faculty noted that, "The morning coffee break was important for Julian. It often occurred at the former Rennebohm Drug Store at the corner of Randall and University Avenue. He explained this as a need stemming from his Norwegian ancestry."

In 1980, Walgreen's purchased the Rennebohm's drug store chain and dropped the Rennebohm name from its Madison stores. The Rennebohm drug store at 1357 University Avenue, with its marble soda fountain, where Professor Sund had his morning coffee, was closed. A year later, the university purchased the building and began using it for offices.

In March 2008, Champion Environmental Services, Inc., a Madison-based environmental remediation, demolition, and recycling contractor began deconstructing eight buildings on the 1300 block of University Avenue, including the historic Rennebohm building, to make way for the construction of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery.

Local preservation organizations had tried to prevent the demolition, but were unsuccessful. Despite fond memories of "Rennie's," some former employees argued against preserving the building. In a letter to the Madison Landmarks Commission, Lenor Zeeh, a University of Wisconsin alumnus who first went to work at Rennebohm's in 1935, wrote: "If there is any significance to this building, it is overshadowed by the importance of what will be built here… Oscar was all about the future – he would want the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery on this site,"

Had he still be around, Oscar Rennebohm (1889-1968), the University of Wisconsin alumnus who founded the chain of drug stores bearing his name and later served as Wisconsin's governor, would in all likelihood have agreed to the demolition – after all, in 1953 he voted to tear down the building that housed his very first drug store, which was located across the street at 1320 University Avenue.

After serving as governor, Rennebohm extended his field of public service by accepting a seat on the Wisconsin Board of Regents. It was as a member of the Board of Regents that he voted to raze the historic building that had once housed his first store, named Badger Pharmacy, which he purchased in 1912.  The building itself was built in the late 1800’s as a buffet that became “a popular meeting place for townspeople and individuals from the campus community.”

In the mid 1920s, Rennebohm moved the Badger Pharmacy across the street to a new building at 1357 University Avenue. An early photograph of the building, taken while it was still under construction, indicates it was constructed by J.H. Findorff, one of the firms involved in the construction of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery building.

The University bought the building at 1320 University Avenue from Rennebohm in 1923, during the time it was purchasing property for the Wisconsin General Hospital. After the Wisconsin Psychiatric Institute, which occupied it for many years, moved to another location in 1953, the university decided to tear down the building "that had outlived its usefulness" and let a green lawn take its place.

When the Town Center on the ground floor of the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery building opens in 2010, one of its features will be a soda fountain, homage to the Rennebohm's drug store that formerly occupied part of its site. Like "Rennie's", the soda fountain will be a social gathering place; but it will also be part of a larger "social action continuum," connecting the research laboratories to the interior public realm, as well as the campus, city and region.

The Town Center reflects the Wisconsin Idea in action – the vision that the University of Wisconsin exists to create knowledge and social interaction to better the lives of all state citizens for the greater good. One exemplar of the Wisconsin Idea is Professor Stephen Babcock, who devised a method to test the butterfat content of milk, allowing merchants to pay farmers based on butterfat rather than weight and effectively ending the days of watered-down milk. It's a safe bet that you'll be able to enjoy a taste of the Wisconsin Idea in action at the Town Center's soda fountain, where they'll be serving fresh and delicious ice cream.