In the 1890s many Russian Jews arrived, fleeing pogroms in Europe, settling around Mound and Park streets.

Italian immigrants (mostly Sicilian) followed from 1900 to 1915 - many of them railroad workers or ditch diggers for Madison Gas Company.

[2] Madison's first public school had opened in 1838 in a log cabin, when the new community was clustered around the capitol square.

[3] A matching section with a 2-story auditorium and lunch room was added in 1924, designed by James and Edward Law.

In 1938 the 1892 building was torn down and replaced by a section with a larger gymnasium, library and music room designed by the Laws and Ellis Potter and built as a Public Works Administration project.

In the 1960s attendance began to drop, partly due to an urban renewal program that razed and rebuilt 52 acres of Greenbush.

[2] Longfellow School was added to the NRHP in 1996 as a good local example of the unusual Elizabethan-Jacobean type of Tudor Revival architecture, and as a good representative of the evolution of elementary education in the U.S., starting as classrooms, and gradually adding auditorium, gym, library and other areas.