Madison is well known for being the only commercial National Historic Landmark district in Indiana. Less known is Madison's foresight and innovation to develop this same downtown when it was a a pilot community in the National Trust's Main Street Program in 1977. Today, Madison continues working towards a lively community; however efforts addressing sustainability are often disjointed. This study explores environmental sustainable concentric strategies for the individual historical commercial building, the block and the district. 

Jean Caroon states, "Existing buildings outnumber new construction 99 to 1." Meanwhile, 95% of all commercial buildings in the United States are small to mid-sized of which most are of the main street type building like in Madison. Madison's downtown primarily consists of two and three-story buildings dating from the 1840's through the 1870's.We believe that by grouping these types of buildings together historic commercial  districts can share resources and become sustainable. 

The Village Lights Bookstore is the pilot commercial building that is leading our study block, known as g-Block, to sustainability. The bookstore is successfully demonstrating energy efficiencies at a building scale by air sealing, insulation and re-implementing the passive technologies that were originally designated into the structure. As additional buildings follow this lead a holistic block or districtwide approach can be implemented to achieve uptime sustainability.