Madison Square Garden (1890)
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| Full name | Madison Square Garden |
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| Location | Manhattan, New York City |
| Coordinates | 40°44′34″N 73°59′08″W / 40.74278°N 73.98556°WCoordinates: 40°44′34″N 73°59′08″W / 40.74278°N 73.98556°W |
| Capacity | 8,000 |
| Construction | |
| Opened | 1890 |
| Closed | 1925 |
| Demolished | 1926 |
| Tenants | |
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Democratic National Convention (1924) World Series of Football (1902-1903) |
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Madison Square Garden was an indoor arena in New York City, the second by that name, and the second to be located at 26th Street and Madison Avenue in Manhattan. Built in 1890 at the cost of a half-million dollars and closing in 1925, the arena hosted numerous events, including boxing matches, orchestral performances, light operas and romantic comedies, the annual French Ball, both the Barnum and the Ringling circuses, and the Democratic National Convention in 1924, which nominated John W. Davis after 103 ballots. The 1890 version replaced the first Madison Square Garden, and was itself replaced by the third Madison Square Garden (which was the first to be located away from Madison Square).
Madison Square Garden II, as it has come to be called in retrospect, was designed by noted architect Stanford White, who kept an apartment there. In 1906 White was murdered in the Garden's rooftop restaurant by millionaire Harry Kendall Thaw over White's affair with Thaw's wife, the well-known actress Evelyn Nesbit, whom White seduced when she was 16. The resulting sensational press coverage of the scandal caused Thaw's trial to be one of the first Trials of the Century.
The new building, which replaced an antiquated open-air structure that was previously a railroad passenger depot, was built by a syndicate which included J. P. Morgan, Andrew Carnegie, P. T. Barnum,Darius Mills, James Stillman and W. W. Astor. White gave them a Beaux-Arts structure with a Moorish feel, including a minaret-like tower modeled after Giralda, the bell tower of the Cathedral of Seville – soaring 32 stories – the city's second tallest building at the time – dominating Madison Square Park. It was 200 feet (61 m) by 485 feet (148 m), and the main hall, which was the largest in the world, measured 200 feet (61 m) by 350 feet (110 m), with permanent seating for 8,000 people and floor space for thousands more. It had a 1200-seat theatre, a concert hall with a capacity of 1500, the largest restaurant in the city and a roof garden cabaret. The final cost for the building, which the New York Times called "one of the great institutions of the town, to be mentioned along with Central Park and the bridge of Brooklyn" was $3 million.
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