Old Building Gets New Life as the First Madison Square Garden

Phineas T. Barnum's Roman Hippodrome.  Note tent covering the open roof.

When William Kissam Vanderbilt finally got control of a chunk of grandpa Cornelius Vanderbilt’s estate in 1879, he knew just what he wanted to do with one of the assets.  The old Commodore owned the property where a half-derelict hulk of a building sat on prime Manhattan real estate. 

The large structure had originally been the New York & Harlem Railroad depot, which the Commodore bought and incorporated into what became the New York Central.  In 1871 station operations moved to the shiny new Grand Central Depot.  Phineas T. Barnum then stepped in and leased the building.  He took the roof off, gutted it, and converted it into an oval arena 270 feet long, with tiers of seats and benches.  It was rechristened first  as the Great Roman Hippodrome then even more grandly  Barnum’s Monster Classical and Geological Hippodrome.  The bombastic showman experienced great success staging his famous circus and other spectacular exhibitions including chariot racing there.

In 1876 Barnum gave up his lease to concentrate on his increasingly lucrative touring circus.  Irish-born band leader Patrick Gilmore, composer of When Johnny Comes Marching Home and other famous marches, then took over the building re-dubbing it Gilmore’s Garden.  When he was not presenting his own concerts there, Gilmore rented the space to promoters of  flower shows, beauty contests, temperance and revival meetings, walking marathons. and in 1877 the first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show then called the New York Bench Show.  He also presented boxing matches at a time when prize fights were illegal in the Empire State by passing them off as exhibitions and even as demonstrations accompanying lectures on the manly arts of self-defense.

The promoter of the Dog Show briefly took over the building but kept Gilmore's name on it.  He added genteel tennis matches and installed an ice skating rink for use during the frigid winter months. 

Vanderbilt's renovated and renamed Madison Square Garden.

It was undoubtedly the boxing which attracted the younger Vanderbilt.  He considered himself something of a sporting man and owned a very successful horse racing stable in France.  Later he was a co-owner of the yacht Defender, which won the 1895 America’s Cup.   He took over the building and with a minor facelift re-opened it on May 31, 1879 as  Madison Square Garden. 

Vanderbilt booked boxing exhibitions featuring Police Gazette heroes like Heavyweight Champion John L. Sullivan.  Other sports attractions presented to crowds of up to 10,000 patrons included track and field meets and bicycle racing—maybe the most popular spectator sport in the country—on his specially built banked velodrome track.  The National Horse Show joined the dog show as an annual attraction and Barnum came back to exhibit his prize elephant Jumbo.  Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show became a national sensation there during a long run in 1886.  The place also hosted national conventions of the Elks and other organizations. 

The old building established itself as the Big Apple’s prime multi-purpose venue for big events.  But it was in deteriorating condition and uncomfortable or unusable much of the year—stiffing hot in the summer and freezing cold and dark during the long winter months.  Harper’s Weekly described it as a “patched-up grumy, drafty combustible, old shell.”

After 11 years Vanderbilt grew tired of his toy while civic leaders clamored for its replacement, an expensive project he had no interest in underwriting.  Enter a consortium the richest men in the city and country—J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, William Waldorf Astor, and others plus showman Barnum—who bought the building and land, tore it down, and erected an impressive replacement also called Madison Square Garden.

Vanderbilt's renovated and renamed Madison Square Garden.

The second Garden was designed by famed architect Stanford White and opened in 1890 at the staggering cost of $3 million.  The grand new edifice did have a roof making it the largest indoor arena/exhibition space in the country.  In fact, the famed Roof Garden Restaurant became a place to be seen for the city elite and a venue for late night entertainment after the Broadway shows were done for the evening.  White was famously shot and killed by the husband of his lover, Gibson Girl model and actress Evelyn Nesbit there in 1906.

The second Garden became the annual home for the touring Barnum and Ringling Brothers circuses and eventually their combined show.  It continued to be the venue of choice for top prize fights and in 1902 and ‘03 the indoor games of the professional World Series of Football.  It also hosted important national events like the 1924 Democratic National Convention which nominated John W. Davis after 103 ballots.

Despite the cultural importance of the building, it was not a financial success and in 1925 the mortgage holder, New York Life Insurance,  foreclosed, tore it down. then erected their skyscraper headquarters on the site.

A third Madison Square Garden was built away from Madison Square on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets where trolley barns once stood.  The new structure was owned by Tex Rickard whose New York Rangers of the National Hockey League (NHL) made it home from 1926.

The third Garden shown on a 1941 picture postcard.

Basketball was represented in a series of collegiate double headers every week featuring top local and national teams as well as the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) beginning in 1938 and hosted seven NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship finals between 1943 and 1950.  The New York Nicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA) began their residency in 1949.

Although this incarnation did not host any national political conventions, Franklin Roosevelt used it to stir up support for his first Presidential campaign with a mammoth rally in 1932.  Thirty years later the Garden was packed for a birthday celebration for John F. Kennedy at which Marylin Monroe famously crooned him “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” in a slinky silver sequined gown that she had to be sewn into. 

A large portrait of George Washington loomed over a huge German American Bund pro-Nazi rally at the Garden in 1939.

Garden III was available to anyone with pockets deep enough to pay the rent so was often the site of events for diametrically opposed groups.  The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee held a Boycott Nazi Germany rally there in 1937 but in 1939 the German American Bund staged an even larger event in support of isolationists trying to keep the U.S. from entering World War II on the side of the British and French.

Billy Graham conducted a 16 week revival Crusade there in 1957.

In the 1960s ownership and management was taken over by the new Madison Square Garden Company under the leadership of impresario Irving Feld of Ringling Bros.  The company laid plans for yet another incarnation, this time built over Pennsylvania Station between Seventh and Eighth Avenues from 31st to 33rd Streets.  After the new building was opened in 1968, the old Garden III was torn down.  The original plan was to erect a new world’s tallest building at the old site but that was squelched by massive neighborhood opposition resulting in strict height limits for new construction in the area.  It remained underused as a parking lot until 1989 when the Worldwide Plaza opened on the site.

Today's Madison Square Garden IV is round.

The newest Garden increasingly became a venue for big pop concert events in addition to its traditional diet of sports.  These famously included a 1971 rock-and-roll revival concert immortalized by Ricky Nelson’s song Garden Party, Elvis Presley, George Harrison’s Concert for Bangladesh, and the Concert for New York City following the September 11 attacks.  Artists like Elton John, Billy Joel, Parliament-Funkadelic,  and U2 have all played there many times with Joel having the record of more than 60 appearances.

The Garden was also the launching pad for the re-introduction of professional wrestling into mainstream pop culture as the venue for the inaugural WrestleMania presented by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1985 and many subsequent marquee events.

The Democrats held their convention at the Garden in 1976, 1980, and 1992.

Madison Square Garden's $1 billion second renovation took place mainly over three off-seasons. It was set to begin after the 2009–10 hockey/basketball seasons but was delayed until after the 2010–11 seasons. Renovation was done in phases with the majority of the work done in the summer months to minimize disruptions to the NHL and NBA seasons.

Despite a billion dollar renovation in 2011-‘13, the Garden lost long time tenants the Ringling Bros. Circus and Disney on Ice  to the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

The City of New York wants to expand Penn Station underneath the Garden which would require that it be torn down and relocated.  This has been a major issue in the city for years with the MSG company resisting the move.  In 2013 they were granted a ten year extension of their air rights permit after which time they will either have to move or begin a new, and risky, application for another extension.  Then, in January 2016, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announced a redevelopment plan for Penn Station that would involve the removal of The Theater at Madison Square Garden but would otherwise leave the arena intact.

 

 

First Madison Square Garden Opens in Old Building

Phineas T. Barnum's Roman Hippodrome.  Note tent covering the open roof.

When  William Kissam Vanderbilt finally got control of a chunk of grandpa Cornelius Vanderbilt's estate in 1879, he knew just what he wanted to do with one of the assets.  The old Commodore owned the property where a half-derelict hulk of a building sat on prime Manhattan real estate. 

The large structure had originally been the New York and Harlem Railroad depot, which the Commodore bought and incorporated into what became the New York Central.  In 1871 station operations moved to the shiny new Grand Central Depot.  Phineus T. Barnum then stepped in and leased the building.  He took the roof off, gutted it, and converted it into an oval arena 270 feet long, with tiers of seats and benches.  It was rechristened first  as the Great Roman Hippodrome then even more grandly  Barnum's Monster Classical and Geological Hippodrome.  The bombastic showman experienced great success staging his famous circus and other spectacular exhibitions including chariot racing there.

In 1876 Barnum gave up his lease to concentrate on his increasingly lucrative touring circus.  Irish born band leader Patrick Gilmore, composer of When Johnny Comes Marching Home and other famous marches, then took over the building re-dubbing it Gilmore's Garden.  When he was not presenting his own concerts there, Gilmore, rented the space to promoters of  flower shows, beauty contests, temperance and revival meetings, walking marathons. and in 1877 the first Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show then called the NewYork Bench Show.  He also presented boxing matches at a time when prize fights were illegal in the Empire State by passing them off as exhibitions and even as demonstrations accompanying lectures on the manly arts of self-defense.

The promoter of the Dog Show briefly took over the building but kept Gilmore's name on it.  He added genteel tennis matches and installed an ice skating rink for use during the frigid winter months. 

Vanderbilt's renovated and renamed Madison Square Garden.

It was undoubtedly the boxing which attracted the younger Vanderbilt.  He considered himself something of a sporting man and owned a very successful horse racing stable in France.  Later he was a co-owner of the yacht Defender, which won the 1895 America's Cup.   He took over the building and with minor facelift re-opened in on May 31, 1879 as  Madison Square Garden. 

Vanderbilt booked boxing exhibitions featuring Police Gazzette heroes like Heavyweight Champion John L. Sulivan.  Other sports attractions presented to crowds of up to 10,000 patrons included track and field meets and bicycle racing--maybe the most popular spectator sport in the country--on his specially built banked  velodrome track.  The National Horse Show joined the dog show as an annual attraction and Barnum came back to exhibit his prize elephant Jumbo.  Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Show became a national sensation there during a long run in 1886.  The place also hosted national conventions of the Elks and other organizations. 

The old building established itself as the Big Apple's prime multi-purpose venue for big events.  But it was in deteriorating condition and uncomfortable or unusable much of the year--stiffing hot in the summer and freezing cold and dark during the long winter months.  Harper's Weekly described it as a "patched-up grumy, drafty combustible, old shell."

After 11 years Vanderbilt grew tired of his toy while civic leaders clamored for its replacement, an expensive project he had no interest in underwriting.  Enter a consortium the richest men in the city and country--J.P. Morgan, Andrew Carnagie, William Waldorf Astor, and others plus showman Barnum--who bought the building and land, tore it down, and erected an impressive replacement also called Madison Square Garden.

Stanford White met a bad end at the roof top restaurant of Madison Square Garden which he designed,

The second Garden was designed by famed architect Stanford White  and opened in 1890 at the staggering cost of $3 million.  The grand new edifice did have a roof making it the largest indoor arena/exhibition space in the country.  In fact a famed Roof Garden Restaurant became a place to be seen for the city elite and a venue for late night entertainment after the Broadway shows were done for the evening.  White was famously shot and by the husband of his lover, Gibson Girl model and actress Evelyn Nesbit there in 1906.

The second Garden became the annual home for the touring Barnum and Ringling Brothers circuses and eventually their combined show.  It continued to be the venue of choice for top prize fights and in 1902 and '03 the indoor games of the professional World Series of Football.  It also hosted important national events like the 1924 Democratic National Convention which nominated John W. Davis after 103 ballots.

Despite the cultural importance of the building, it was not a financial success and in 1925 the mortgage holder, New York Life Insurance,  foreclosed, tore it down. then erected their skyscraper headquarters on the site.

A third Madison Square Garden was built away from Madison Square on Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets where trolly barns once stood.  The new structure was owned by Tex Rickard whose New York Rangers of the National Hockey League (NHL)made it home from 1926. 

Basketball was represented in a series of collegiate double headers every week featuring top local and national teams as well as the National Invitation Tournament (NIT) beginning in 1938 and hosted seven NCAA Men's Basketball Championship finals between 1943 and 1950.  The New York Nicks of the National Basketball Association (NBA) began their residency in 1949.

Although this incarnation did not host any national political conventions, Franklin Roosevelt used it to stir up support for his first Presidential campaign with a mammoth rally in 1932.  Thirty years later the Garden was packed for a birthday celebration for John F. Kennedy at which Marylin Monroe famously crooned him "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" in a slinky silver sequined gown that she had to be sewn into. 

A large portrait of George Washington loomed over a huge German American Bund pro-Nazi rally at the Garden in 1939.

Garden III was available to anyone with the pockets deep enough to pay the rent so was often the site of events for diametrically opposed groups.  The American Jewish Congress and the Jewish Labor Committee held a Boycott Nazi Germany rally there in 1937 but in 1939 the German American Bund staged an even larger event in support of isolationists trying to keep the U.S. from entering World War II on the side of the British and French.

Billy Graham conducted a 16 week revival Crusade there in 1957.

In the 1960's ownership and management was taken over by the new Madison Square Garden Company under the leadership of impresario Irving Feld of Ringling Bros.  The  company laid plans for yet another incarnation, this time built over Pennsylvania Station between Seventh and Eighth Avenues from 31st to 33rd Streets.  After the new building was opened in 1968, the old Garden III was torn down.  The original plan was to erect a new world's tallest building at the old site but that was squelched by massive neighborhood opposition resulting in strict height limits for new construction in the area.  It remained under-used as a parking lot until 1989 when the Worldwide Plaza opened on the site.

Today's Madison Square Garden IV is round.

The newest Garden increasingly became a venue for big pop concert events in addition to its traditional diet of sports.  These famously included a 1971 rock-and-roll revival concert immortalized by Ricky Nelson's song Garden Party, Elvis Presley, George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh, and the Concert for New York City following the September 11 attacks.  Artists like Elton John, Billy Joel, Parlaiment-Funkadelic,  and U2 have all played there many times with Joel having the record of more than 60 appearances.

The Garden was also the launching pad for the re-introduction of professional wrestling into mainstream pop culture as the venue for the inaugural Wrestlemania presented by the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) in 1985 and many subsequent marquee events.

The Democrats held their convention at the Garden in 1976, 1980, and 1992.

Despite a billion dollar renovation in 2011-'13, the Garden lost long time tenants the Ringling Bros. Circus and Disney on Ice  to the new Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

The City of New York wants to expand Penn Station underneath the Garden which would require that it be torn down and relocated.  This has been a major issue in the city for years with the MSG company resisting the move.  In 2013 they were granted a ten year extension of their air rights permit after which time they will either have to move or begin a new, and risky, application for another extension.  In all likelihood by the end of the permit the Garden will be forced to relocate two blocks away just south of the James Farley Post Office. 

Madison Square Garden V is in the cards.

Patterson—The Strike that Came to Broadway

On February 3, 1913 workers were one week into of one of the most storied battles of the ruthless pre-World War I class war.

Just a year after cotton and woolen mill workers in Lawrence, Massachusetts launched their epic Bread and Roses struggle over assigning workers to tend more machines, workers in the specialized silk industry in Patterson, New Jersey found themselves faced with a similar problem.  Local employers announced the impositions of the four loom system in January, 1913.

Previously the mostly women workers tended two looms with children helping by winding bobbins, sweeping scrap, and pushing heavy carts of finished materials.  Men, mostly immigrants filled more skilled jobs maintaining and setting up the delicate machinery.  The new system not only put people out of work, but those who kept their jobs got no additional compensation for essentially double the work.  And hours were lengthened to make up for lost time as machines were fouled and shut down as exhausted workers could not keep up.  Those additional hours came at not raise to daily pay.

As in Lawrence, there were skeleton organizations of AFL craftsmen and a small IWW branch engaged mostly in education and general agitation but workers had no effective recognition.  Weavers at the Doherty Silk Mill got together and elected a four man grievance committee to lay out the hardships to the bosses.  When they presented themselves at the mill office, committee members were peremptorily fired.  The next day, January 27, 800 workers at the mill went out on strike.

By the end of the week the strike had spread to 300 mills large and small in Patterson and its immediate vicinity.  Recognizing the need for experienced leadership, the strikers call on the Industrial Workers of the World.

Many of the same figures who energized the Lawrence Strike came to do the same in Patterson including IWW General Secretary-Treasurer William D. “Big Bill” Heywood, the Italian  IWW leader and anarchist Carlo Tresca, the fiery young speaker Elizabeth Gurley Flynn.  They joined the seasoned German IWW organizer Adolf Lessing who was already on the ground.

The Wobbly leadership empowered the strike committee and helped it organize mass pickets at the mill gates as well as provide logistical support for the strikers.  Flynn organized special meetings of women, both strikers and the wives of strikers.  As in Lawrence, the strikers were met with mass attacks by police and assaults, even gunfire, from harmed thugs employed as guards by the larger mills.  Over the course of the strike three workers would be killed by the gun thugs, and two more later died of their injuries.

The IWW leaders recognized that they had to make the strike broader.  Another 1000 mills and dye houses in the area were still working.  And new silk centers in Pennsylvania with more modern equipment, many owned by the same companies that controlled the Paterson mills, could continue to meet the commercial needs.  They called a general strike of the industry for the end of February.  It was successful in the Patterson area where virtually all shops downed tools and joined the strike.  Eventually more than 20,000 were out.

Authorities responded with mass arrests, Heywood, Tresca, and Flynn were all nabbed as were hundreds of rank and file members.  Over the course of the trial over 3,000 were arrested and most sentenced to ten day jail terms.  The IWW’s General Defense Committee went into overdrive trying to raise money for lawyers and to support the families of jailed strikers.

The spreading strike naturally attracted the attention of the press.  While mainstream newspapers and magazines were almost universal in providing scare headlines and condemning the strikers, left wing journalists came to tell the other side, including Jack Reed, the renegade socialite and future patron of the avante guarde Mabel Dodge, and a young Walter Lippmann.  Reed was swept up in the street arrests and sentenced to jail.  He wrote columns on the inhumane conditions in the hellishly crowded jails which were smuggled out and printed in leading New York newspapers.  Exasperated authorities released him early.

Returning to New York Reed and Dodge, who were having an affair, hatched a plan to bring the stirring story of the Patterson Strike to the stage to raise popular support for the struggle and money for the strike fund.  They did not think small.  They rented Madison Square Garden.  Dodge provided seed money and prevailed on her circle of artistic friends to help.  Reed, one of the founding members of the Provincetown Players, put together the program and wrote most of the script.  His close friend Eugene O'Neill, who had joined the IWW Marine Transport Workers Union during his days as sailor on tramp steamers, is thought to have written some of the dialogue.

An enormous electric light bulb sign was erected over the Garden featuring the shirtless figure of a worker, one arm raised, rising above a skyline of smoking mills.  The same figure, drawn by IWW poet, illustrator and editor Ralph Chaplain also adorned the program book.  For many years it would be used as the cover for the union’s famous Little Red Songbook.

More than a thousand strikers—men, women, and children, came to the city to bring the strike stunningly to life on stage on June 7.  The city had never seen anything like it.  The Patterson Pageant ran four days.  It succeeded in getting the strike talked about.  Dodge would later recall,

For a few electric moments there was a terrible unity between all of these people. They were one: the workers who had come to show their comrades what was happening across the river and the workers who had come to see it. I have never felt such a pulsing vibration in any gathering before or since.

Unfortunately the Pageant was not a financial success.  In fact it was a disaster.  There were not enough limousine liberals to fill the expensive one and two dollar seats in the enormous building.  Instead the seats were filled at the last minute by working people who paid a dime or were even let in free.  The program lost money for the Strike Fund.

Reed and Dodge did not stick around to try and clean up the mess.  The day after the show closed, they boarded an ocean liner for a trip to Europe.

The IWW had exhausted virtually its entire treasury on the strike.  Socialist Party locals had also raised money, but by midsummer they were tapped out as well.  Without the support of a strike fund to keep food on the table, workers began to drift back to work.  The bulk of them returned in July.  The IWW Textile Workers Industrial Union, which had never been able to spread the strike into an industry wide action that it knew was key to winning, officially called an end to the strike and sent the last stragglers back to work in September.

None of the strikers economic demands were met.  More over the larger companies used the prolonged strike to force smaller, “less efficient” mills into bankruptcy.  There were fewer jobs to go back to.  On top of that, the country was sliding into another one of its periodic financial panics.

There were plenty of recriminations to go around.  The AFL accused the IWW of “using” the Patterson workers to advance their revolutionary cause.  Elizabeth Gurley Flynn defended the strike in her memoirs:

What is a labor victory? I maintain that it is a twofold thing. Workers must gain economic advantage, but they must also gain revolutionary spirit, in order to achieve a complete victory. For workers to gain a few cents more a day, a few minutes less a day, and go back to work with the same psychology, the same attitude toward society is to achieve a temporary gain and not a lasting victory. For workers to go back with a class-conscious spirit, with an organized and determined attitude toward society means that even if they have made no economic gain they have the possibility of gaining in the future.

The strike was a virtual last hurrah for the Textile Workers IU.  There were a few other scattered actions during the balance of 1913 then the financial panic made calling strikes an exceptionally risky business.  By 1916 the IWW General Administration suspended the charter of the Industrial Union for lack of membership.  Active local branches continued with a direct affiliation to the GA.  There would be precious little further activity in what had been a key IWW industry.

Instead the union turned its attention more and more to the extractive industries of the west—the wheat and grain harvests, California agriculture, Pacific Northwest fruit, copper and other hard rock mining, coal mining, large scale construction projects, and the lumber industry.  With the exception of the mining industries, most of the workers in these industries were single transient men moving from job to job, even from industry to industry.  These were tough, militant men, but the absence of home guard workers with families and large numbers of women dramatically changed the legendary fighting union.