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Property Location
Property Features
The map code is 0709-133-1822-0.
Characterizing this five story building are round corners, stone quoins, keystones, a red brick exterior, a wrap around cornice, and a flat roof. The Cardinal Hotel is also part of the East Wilson Street Historic District (NRHP listed 4/3/86). Madison Historic Landmark: 10/25/1993
City of Madison, Wisconsin Underrepresented Communities Historic Resource Survey Report:
Ricardo Alfredo Gonzalez was born in Camaguey, Cuba in 1946 and immigrated to Miami, Florida in 1960 in the wake of the Cuban Revolution. Ricardo moved to Oklahoma and then Texas in 1963. He attended college and moved to Ripon, Wisconsin in 1968 to work as a manager for the Green Giant canning company. Gonzalez ran, unsuccessfully, for a State Assembly seat in 1972.
After moving to Madison, the prior year to accept a position as an affirmative action officer, Ricardo Gonzalez took ownership of the struggling Cardinal Bar in 1974. Gonzalez quickly became part of Madison’s active and vocal Cuban community. He was also a gay man, active in Madison’s LGBTQ community, and intended to run Cardinal Bar as a gay bar. However, the Cardinal Bar soon became popular with a diverse clientele, including the LGBTQ and Latino/a communities and others.
In 1980, Gonzalez was the director of a local organization that cared for and educated Cuban immigrants who were directed to Fort McCoy and eventually settled in Madison. In 1981, a series of violent incidents occurred in the bar. Accompanied by damage from fire and flooding, these events nearly took the Cardinal Bar under. The bar closed briefly but re-opened again. The bar was remodeled in 1985 and 1986.
Gonzalez was politically active in the community, and, therefore, the bar became the informal headquarters of many political actions in Madison during the 1970s and 1980s. It was a venue for campaign fundraisers for gay and lesbian political candidates, as well as fundraisers for LGBTQ organizations and causes. Gonzalez was elected alderman of the 4th District in 1989, becoming the first gay Latino elected to public office in the United States. Gonzalez’s work as alderman focused on downtown revitalization, and he is credited with the creation of the Monona Terrace Convention Center. After forty-three years in operation, making it the longest-running gay bar in Madison’s history and likely the longest-running Latino-owned enterprise in Madison’s history, too, the Cardinal Bar closed in 2017 and was sold.
National And State Register Of Historic Places Listings
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