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Madison Square Garden
Madison Square
Garden, often abbreviated as
MSG and sometimes simply called "The Garden" has been the name of
four arenas in New York City, United States. The first two were located
at Madison Square, thus the name. Subsequently a new 20,000-seat Garden
was built at 50th Street and 8th Avenue, and the current Garden is sited
on top of Pennsylvania Station at 33rd Street and 7th Avenue. The
present arena is informally known to some as "The World's Most Famous
Arena".
Present operations
The present Garden is best
known as the home of the
New York Knicks (basketball)
and New York Rangers (ice hockey), professional sports teams that play
their home matches in the arena. It also hosts the Ringling Brothers and
Barnum and Bailey Circus when it comes to New York City, home games for
the
St. John's Red Storm (college
basketball), and almost any other kind of indoor activity that draws
large audiences, such as the 2004 Republican National Convention.
MSG is also known for its
place in the history of boxing. Many of boxing's most important fights
were held at the Madison Square Garden, including many of Joe Louis, the
Roberto Duran-Ken Buchanan affair, and the first Joe Frazier-Muhammad
Ali bout. Before promoters such as Don King and Bob Arum moved boxing to
Las Vegas, Madison Square Garden was considered the Mecca of boxing.
Seating
Seating in the present
Madison Square Garden is arranged in five ascending levels. The lowest
one is referred to as "rink-side" for hockey games or "court-side" for
basketball games (at some events a still lower seating level, known as
the Rotunda, is also provided); next above this is the First Promenade,
followed by the Second Promenade, First Balcony and Second Balcony. The
seats of these five levels originally bore the colors red, orange,
yellow, green and blue respectively; however, this color scheme has
since been abolished, mainly because the "blue seats" had become
synonymous with rowdy behavior by fans, particularly those attending New
York Rangers hockey games.
History
The site of the first
Madison Square Garden was formerly the Union Depot of the New York and
Harlem Railroad. When the depot was moved to the current site of Grand
Central Terminal in 1871 the depot was sold to P.T. Barnum and converted
into hippodrome called "Barnum's Monster Classical and Geological
Hippodrome". In 1876 it was renamed to Gilmore's Garden.
William Henry Vanderbilt
officially renamed Gilmore's Garden to Madison Square Garden and
reopened the facility to the public on May 30, 1879 at 26th Street and
Madison Avenue. The first arena was originally built for the sport of
track cycling, which is still remembered in the name of the Madison
event.
The second Madison Square
Garden, designed by Stanford White, who would later be killed there,
opened at this site in 1890 and remained until the third Garden opened
in 1925. On February 11, 1968 Madison Square Garden III closed and
Madison Square Garden IV opened.
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