Madison, Wisconsin, homeowner pulls plug on July house move

Jun 28, 2025

Peter Taglia canceled plans to move this 1920s-era West Mifflin Street home designed by local architect Ferdinand Kronenberg ahead of its planned demolition this summer. "I gave it my best," he said. "I just kept on hitting roadblocks."

If they had more money, or at least more time, the Downtown Madison residents who banded together to relocate a century-old house in July might have been able to make it happen.

But the move has been canceled, and the brick house at 427 W. Mifflin St. — deemed historically significant by the city in part because it was designed by a noted Madison architect — will be demolished to make way for a larger residential development at the site.

“I gave it my best. I just kept on hitting roadblocks,” said Peter Taglia, an environmental scientist who owns several houses in Madison and hoped to move this one to his own neighborhood near Brittingham Park.

“It’s a little bit heartbreaking,” he said. “There’s going to be a demolition now of a really cool house that I put a ton of time and money into trying to save.”

Peter Taglia with some of the paperwork required for the city to approve his proposed house relocation. Taglia said bringing the house up to modern building codes proved too complicated on his budget and timeline.

Taglia undertook most of the planning and permitting for the relocation himself, with help from supportive neighbors. He paid the deposits, some of which are nonrefundable, with a home equity line of credit. The city approved a route and the associated impacts on trees.

But he said bringing the house up to modern building codes proved too complicated on his budget and timeline. New challenges kept arising, cost estimates kept going up and the amount of time he would have to spend on renovations kept growing.

“It was a death by a thousand cuts,” he said.

The nonprofit Madison Development Corp. needs the house gone in July so it can open a 40-unit apartment building at the site next August. MDC received permission from the city last fall to demolish the house. MDC President Lorrie Heinemann previously said it was supportive of Taglia’s plans but couldn’t delay the project for him.

“By the time I learned about the project, the clock was already ticking,” Taglia said. He said the narrow window limited his ability — and the city’s — to resolve the many discrepancies between the house’s condition and today’s building standards, especially when he was doing so much of the work himself.

Ald. Mike Verveer, who represents the West Mifflin Street site in the 4th District and has been involved in the relocation effort, said he is disappointed the house will be demolished.

“I was really optimistic that he would be able to pull this off and we would be able to preserve this historic resource for our community,” Verveer said. “In retrospect, I guess it just wasn’t enough time.”

Taglia, Verveer said, “certainly gave it all that he had.”

With a house no longer bound for the lot he was readying at 730 Clark Court, Taglia is pivoting to new construction. He’s interested, he said, in taking advantage of a recently proposed zoning change that would allow for a building with two or three units, rather than constructing a single-family home — if the change can be adopted in time.

"I gave it my best. I just kept on hitting roadblocks."

Peter Taglia, environmental scientist who owns several houses in Madison

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Online records indicate the building, which is next door to Mount Vernon Tap, now houses apartments and formerly was a store.