t was nearly 60 years ago that Frank Lloyd Wright drew the plans that eventually inspired the Monona Terrace Convention Center, but if you wanted to go back even further, the words of another distinguished Madisonian on the subject echo across more than a century. It was in 1856 that Jairus Fairchild, the very first mayor of Madison, took a look around and said, "What this city needs is an auditorium." One suspects Fairchild probably got some kind of small auditorium or meeting hall, but the debate about building a first-class facility on the shore of Madison's second-largest lake raged, on and off, for another 135 years. The cast of proponents and foes included not only the internationally renowned Wright, but governors, mayors and U.S. senators. We can pick up the story in 1907, when a state senator from Menomonie, James Stout, urged a legislative commission to consider the six-block area along Monona Avenue from the new Capitol to the lakeshore for a mall with large government buildings. Then in 1910, John Nolen, a landscape architect from Boston, expanded the plan for a six-block mall and esplanade ending at Law Park. The idea was not acted upon, though in 1925 the Wisconsin State Journal published a plan showing an auditorium at the foot of Monona Avenue with a connecting bridge from Wilson Street. Again, there was no action, but some potential seed money for the project became available early in 1938, when a $16,000 surplus from the Wisconsin Centennial Corporation (which had sponsored the state's 100th-year celebration two years before) was awarded to the newly formed Madison Planning Trust to finance and prepare an auditorium plan for Madison. That same year, the city and county were planning a joint administrative building. A huge name now entered the picture to stir these disparate elements up even more -- Frank Lloyd Wright.