City officials unveil Madison’s first rainbow street crossing

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - You might find yourself walking across a rainbow the next time you’re in downtown Madison.

The City of Madison and Friends of Madison Arts Commission held a ribbon-cutting ceremony Thursday to officially introduce the city’s first rainbow crosswalk.

The crosswalk honors the LGTBQIA+ community.

“This is a symbolic gesture and we really need to make sure that our actions and our everything matches what this stands for,” Madison arts program administrator Karin Wolf said. “But this is probably aspirational. This is about everybody being welcome in this community and being celebrated and we want to live up to that.”

The rainbow crosswalk sits at the top of State Street, right where it intersects with the Capitol Square.

It’s one of the busiest pedestrian crosswalks in Madison.

“We have been looking at the top of State street from the inception of this program,” Former Madison Alder Lindsay Lemmer said. “We wanted to have it somewhere where it would have the most traffic, the most population for people who are able to enjoy it.”

Hundreds of donors from the Madison community helped make the crosswalk possible.

Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway said she’s grateful for the community’s support

“It’s very heartening to me,” Rhodes-Conway said. “As Madison’s first lesbian mayor, to know my community supports this kind of work is really wonderful.”

The rainbow crosswalk has been in the works since the fall of 2019.

City organizers hope to place more rainbow crosswalks throughout Madison.

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